Play Work

We can heave a big sigh of relief for the nation (perhaps) as a result of yesterdays outcomes, but North Carolina seems to be deeper in the mud than ever now.  It remains to be seen what impact the new NC republican administration will have on areas like education and environmental issues.   I'm not sure but I think I could have some problems in terms of finding work in my areas of interest in the future.

But I want to think positive and share another great experience I had last week when I attended a workshop on Spaces for Play, part of the Playful Pedagogy certificate program offered by the NC Zoo.  While the term Play worker sounds like an oxymoron, it is in fact a growing field promoted in England and other European countries over the past few years and is slowly being promoted here in the States.

The problem is that children these days are apparently only spending 1% of their time in free play.  This is the kind of stuff that as a child I and my contemporaries spent most of our time out of school engaged in.  Riding bikes around the neighborhood, building forts, climbing trees, exploring the woods and ponds, making up games and engaging in free, creative play, with little or no adult supervision.  Now most of a kids time is spent in organized activities like sports, music or ballet lessons, homework and clubs and what little free time kids do have they are often glued to a TV, computer or other screen-centered device that doesn't promote creative thinking, let alone any physical activity or movement that would promote good health.

Risk-taking, learning social skills, determining how to think freely and decide what's safe and what isn't are integral parts of free play.  We are generating a world of kids who are scared of being outside, raised by parents who are afraid of their kids being out of their sight.  Helicopter parents is a term that I've been hearing recently to describe the hovering worry wart types that won't let a kid have any fun.  Many folks at the conference that work with families said their role was mostly to distract parents so the kids could have some adventures while their folks weren't looking!  Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods and his Children and Nature Network tell much more about these issues and the website has great ideas for getting outside with kids.

At the workshop I got to network with cool folks from the Philly and Phoenix zoos and childcare workers and others from across NC.  Together we learned about play theory, about creating spaces for play that provide a sense of safety for the parents, like fences in the distance, but opportunities for the kids to have some fun.  The term "affordance" refers to objects in the setting that afford opportunities for creative play.  In natural settings these could be creeks, fallen logs, sticks and branches with which to build forts and other structures. They might also be stuff like manufactured objects such as Styrofoam noodles, PVC pipes, buckets, balls, clay, tarps, and nets that kids can use to construct things or create games.  Seems the main goal of the play worker is to provide a safe place for kids, with objects that can become "affordances"  and then get out of the way, only stepping in if it seems someone is actually on the verge of getting seriously injured.

Here I am inside our "fox den".  Working as a team we had to create a habitat for play.  We took advantage of the natural placement of rocks and used sticks, branches and a blue tarp to create a roof for the den.  Then we covered it all with leaves for camouflage.  It even had a back escape opening.  We managed to get 10 people into this space which was actually pretty cozy.  I had a good time, learned and networked and look forward to part 3 of the training, hopefully coming up in 2013.

Growing Community Gardens- "KALE Yeah"

Given it's election day and I don't really want to think about the possibilities of how wrong it could all turn out, I've been avoiding the news all day and trying to distract myself with cooking and other chores.  That said- I feel it would be good to do a post about something really positive that I was involved in recently.

 Hopes and dreams of community garden organizers

Dozens of flip chart pages surrounded our group two weeks ago at Walnut Hall in Tanglewood Park.  I was pleased to help co-facilitate an exciting and action packed training workshop in Winston-Salem where 50 community garden leaders from across North Carolina came together to learn and practice information and training workshops as a part of the Growing Communities curriculum produced by the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA).  It was a tremendous couple of days that I had been working on pulling together for a year with a group of folks from the NC Community Garden Partners.  The planning committee raised money to give 10 scholarships and offer the workshop at a very low rate.  Thanks to many generous folks including NC and A&T State Universities' Cooperative Extensions, Forsyth Farm Bureau, Carolina Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) and Take Step Two of Pitt County among others.

People came from all kinds of gardening projects; some run by churches and food pantries to help feed the hungry, others from school-based gardens, traditional allotment style gardens, senior center and public housing sites.  Some folks were seasoned, others very new to the world of community gardening.  A key lesson is helping people to understand it's not enough to build some beds, put up a fence and find a water source.  You have to build a community group strategically and carefully in order for the garden to really succeed.  It is recommended that at least 10 committed people are ready to come to the table before even beginning to organize a community garden.  Half of those will probably drop out or fade away over time and the people with a "fire in the belly" are the key to long term success.

We worked intensively for 2 solid days and I think the folks were really energized and inspired to get back home and put the learning into practice.  The goal of the Growing Communities training is to teach gardeners how to be better organizers. It is often said that community gardens fail not because people can't grow beautiful tomatoes, but because they are poorly organized.  And as a person that has been trying to make 3 community gardens successful for about 5 years now with mixed results, I can say this is very true.  This was the second time I had attended this training and I carried back lots of new ideas and reminders of old knowledge too. All will help me continue my work of making the Growing Healthy Kids gardens with which I work more successful, more community driven, community run and organized entities.

One of the strategies of the training is to throw the participants together into small groups where they are  charged with developing an 85 minute presentation on a garden organizing topic to be presented the following afternoon. Not only do they have to do this with a group of strangers, they have to familiarize themselves with the educational info and workshop materials of the Growing Communities training manual in a very short time frame.  People really came through and in the session on Communications and PR we were left with the rallying cry "Community Gardens- KALE Yeah!!"

Nuff said.

October Blooms

Just when I think the garden is winding down I am pleased to see mums and asters coming into their prime.  I know they will be blooming now but it still comes as a bit of a surprise each fall.  This is a combo that I am particularly fond of.  The aster I think is Aster Fricartii, Wonder of Staffa.  I got it from my father some years back and it is a winner, blooming here in the Piedmont of NC from September into late October.  I especially like it together with this dark pink mum and so we have planted them together along one edge of the yard.

  Camellia Cecilia in Bud

The camellias too are beginning to open.  We've planted lots of them in the past few years ever since I  worked at Camellia Forest and now they are beginning to get settled in and offer a good show of blooms.  I've decided camellias are a bit fickle, they need enough sun and light to set flowers but not so much that they get burned in the winter time.  It also seems quite helpful to feed them a couple of times a year to help set good buds.  The ones we've managed to put in the right place and treat well are finally rewarding us with blooms and more vigorous growth.  

Camellia Cecilia

A friend once said that when you add new shrubs and trees to the landscape "the first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap" and I think there is a lot of truth to this statement. Things are doing especially well this year as we had a decent amount of rain in the second half of the summer and early fall.

Here is another mum that is a great shade.  We have a variety of colors as mums tend to cross and mix over time.  Some have gotten kind of washed out and are almost white or a very pale pink and others have gone quite dark, some almost red.  It's interesting to see what happens over time if they are allowed to mix and blend. 

I worked outside all afternoon, it was a glorious day and finally I felt I was getting on the other side of the cold I've had this week.  Unfortunately, despite my best efforts at hand washing and trying to avoid contaminating him, David is now down with the same bug.  Oh well, the least I can do is go pull some dinner together for us.

In trying times, try gardening for a change

I was miffed to discover recently that most of my Chapel Hill News Articles (listed on the right side of my blog page)  have been sent to the archives and can no longer be read by clicking on the link there.  Reading through them in my files, I think these are pretty good pieces and I want people to be able to link to them, as an example of my published work. I do aspire to actually publish more work sometime in this life!

So, I decided I would "reprint" a few of the favorites here and I think this one written in October of 2008 seems fairly appropriate with the election coming up.  See what you think.

Originally published in The Chapel Hill News October 22, 2008:

October is the month when my partner David and I begin to chip away at the list of annual fall tasks that include cleaning out the stove pipes and gutters, cutting firewood, cleaning up the gardens and laying a fresh layer of mulch around the perennials.  It gives us a break from the incessant discussions about the election and the failing economy.

Motivation for chores can be hard when the days are filled with brilliant color from changing leaves against clear blue skies. We want to take a break from the hard work of the summer garden and enjoy the autumn.  I want to escape from digging shrub holes and walk down to the creek to watch the falling leaves swirl down out of the trees and drift lazily along the surface of the water. 

We’ve wiled away some recent afternoons roaming around our place, discussing plans for the landscape.  Where to build stone walls, make new pathways, or plant additional trees and shrubs.  Living in the country with land around us offers an endless opportunity for expansion. It’s a bit like a balloon note on a sub-prime mortgage, for every hour spent planning; there will be 100 hours of doing required.  The longer we live here, the more grandiose the schemes become, the older we get, the slower the projects are completed, but instead of worrying about our bank accounts or the latest smear campaign, we ponder which bulbs to order and where to plant them.

I want to turn off NPR and enjoy the flower garden which has entered another phase of bloom worthy of long contemplation.  Pink, salmon and purple mums and blue asters billow out of the beds, punctuated by the bright oranges, reds and yellows of late zinnias putting on one last show. 

As the days grow shorter, and the election closer, our desire for comfort foods increases.  Unable to completely let go and eager for the latest in the ongoing political and financial battles, we listen to the radio while eating suppers of tender homegrown salads made festive with beets and carrots, sharp with radishes and nasturtiums.   The cool weather allows us to turn on the oven and bake; the scent of crusty loaves of bread, homemade veggie pizzas, and apple-oatmeal muffins wafts from our kitchen.

As November approaches; the sun moves lower, shadows grow longer and the stock market continues its roller coaster ride.  A delicate balance has to be achieved between enjoying the gorgeous days, getting necessary work done before winter, and not letting politics take over every conversation.  Maintaining our place is an effort, but if everything goes awry, at least we’ll have vegetables to eat, a beautiful garden to relax in and endless chores to help take our minds off the financial problems.  

Hope you enjoyed this one, it seems not much has really changed.  Look for others as we roll along, I'll try to add them as seems timely.

Grey Speckled Cow Peas

So I'm home with a cold, not so sick that I have to take to my bed, sometimes I think I would prefer that- well I say I would- but really?  All the same, I'm feeling crummy enough to not have energy for much of anything.  I hate this- I'm a terrible patient, there are so many things that I need and want to be doing.  You know- house cleaning would be kind of a good idea, its been weeks, or working out in the garden.  It's a spectacular fall day, clear and sunny, just under 70 degrees, there are fall veggies to weed and mulch, summer veggies to pull out, weeds and mulching over the whole place actually would be very useful.  But instead, I'm doing light duty things like shelling peas.

I have this handy little sheller that I inherited from my mother, shoots the shells out one end and the peas back at you.  It's the kind of task that would be good to have small children around for so they could run after the peas that fly across the room.  But there are none of those here, so I instead, put on my spectacles and rove around picking up all that I can find that have been flung to the far corners of the house.

These grey speckled cow peas are a new variety for me.  You know, if you're a regular reader, about my zaniness for beans.  These are an heirloom variety, in the same family as the purple hull black-eyed peas that I've grown for many years, but entirely different in nature.  For one- they are impossible to shell when fresh but need to be picked as they are starting to dry out and then allowed to dry out completely before attempting to shell them.  The purple hulls are quite easy to shell by hand when fresh and pop into the freezer for later use as "fresh" peas.  I've yet to cook any of these speckled peas, though they are very beautiful with their mauve mottled coloration and white eyes.  I think this would make an excellent Formica pattern for a kitchen counter.  Or maybe a screen saver background.

I'll let you know how they taste when I get around to cooking some, I'm guessing I might get about a quart of dried beans off my tiny experimental patch. I planted an area about 5x6, that has reached to more like 10x10, they're a bit rambling and very prolific.  I like that in a bean.

So I'm off for another cup of ginger lemon tea with honey accept I'm out of honey so thinking of trying sorghum, I've got lots of that, I wonder if it will have the same soothing properties?  Will see.

Back from the beach and settling into autumn

Once again, despite my spouting to the contrary- another month has whooshed past without a post.  It's amazing.  I don't even have a really good excuse accept I've just been distracted by life I guess.

Hitt-Rogers Clan

We did spend a week at our favorite beach house at Trout and Ocean and were so lucky and delighted to have the entire Missouri faction of the family show up to share the fun.  Most special was the delectable Aria, all the way from Olympia, Washington, my grand niece and she was grand, I absolutely ate her up every morsel!

 

My brother Jon is about the only person I know that would welcome the above combo, peanut butter and onion on the left, pimento cheese on the right, all washed down with a cold brew.  I think this was the day he boasted of taking not one, but two naps.  Now that's truly being on holiday.

Our encampment, daily erected in some variation on the colorful theme. Late afternoon- everyone was probably at the house eating or napping.

Back at home, we've had hot and humid weather followed by cold and rainy.  In fact its been the wettest late summer/early autumn period that I remember in some years.  I'm glad to have the rain and see all the waterways flowing fully, but hoping to see some of that crisp, dry, sunny weather in the very near future that truly speaks autumn to me.

The fall veggie garden planted about a month ago just before our exit for the beach is coming along famously, all the seeds are up, carrots, spinach, lettuce, chois, turnips.  The only thing that's a little rough are the beets which got attacked by caterpillars when I wasn't looking, we'll see if I rescued them in time. The broccoli, cabbage and collards are loving the cool, wet weather.  Hoping to be able to start harvesting some greens in a few more weeks.  I start to really crave fresh greens about now and have been eating up the ones I froze in the sprig time.  We've also been making big pots of soup and baking bread to make us comfy on the chilly wet days.

I'm glad the summer is finally past and really looking forward to fall and winter and slowing down a tad.

Turn on that oven and bake!

With the drop in temperature the interest in cooking has been renewed with verve. Building on the fact that I had a dairy extravaganza last week, precipitated by an over accumulation of cream in the freezer.   I made two pounds of butter which also yielded about 2 quarts of buttermilk and some creme fresh.  I also made yogurt and yogurt cheese.  Next came two buttermilk apple crumb cakes and last night a bodacious buttermilk spoon bread.  Spoon bread is an interesting cross between cornbread and polenta or mush.  Last night I added fresh corn, pasilla chiles, and chopped green onions, the resulting dish was hearty, creamy, sweet, (though I added no sugar) and quite satisfying. Recipe below.

I was surprised in the garden yesterday to see the sweet potatoes blooming.  A pretty flower, like a morning glory, which is in the same plant family.  There has been a battle of sorts going on for the past couple of months between the sweet potatoes which always grow rampant and run over everything around them and the Long Island Cheese squash.

Sweet potatoes are one of the happiest crops in our climate.  There is a reason North Carolina is the largest producer of sweet potatoes in the country raising close to 40% of all the sweet potatoes grown in the US, they grow VERY happily here.  Lately, eating the greens seems to be the rage, everyone is talking about it, and the way they grow, its worth trying.  So last night we did.  Just the tender tips and youngest leaves, washed and sauteed like spinach in olive oil with a little garlic, S&P, they were quite tasty.  I've heard they are also super nutritious.  Researching a bit I see its recommended that they are blanched in boiling water for a couple of minutes before stir-frying them, but we did not do that and they were still good.

The Long Island Cheese squashes huge pizza sized leaves rambled down through the sweet potato patch and even up into the pepper cages. They have traveled easily 40 feet down the row and back again.

One squash hangs down between a couple of pepper plants, another is over in the asparagus patch.  I had tried this squash once before but unsuccessfully.  They are a type of butternut but not as dense or sweet, the flesh is slightly more stringy, a little like a spaghetti squash, light and good flavored. This year we put the seeds in the ground and just got out of the way!  The result; four good sized squashes from two plants. I think pound for pound the sweet potatoes will win out but everyone seems to have come to an amicable sharing of space.

This one here is the biggest and best. 12.5 Pounds 

I can just see Cinderella riding off to the ball in this dude

So for the spoon bread, here's the recipe which is a doubling of the original from the Joy of Cooking, plus my embellishments, always embellishing...

Buttermilk Spoon Bread 6-8 servings

Pour 3 cups boiling water over 2 cups yellow cornmeal, mix well and let cool
Meanwhile:
beat together 2 eggs, 2 T melted butter, 2 cups buttermilk, 2 t baking soda and 1.5 t salt
Scrape the kernels from two ears of corn (or open a can or use frozen, about 1 cup of kernels)
Roast, skin, seed and chop 2 pasilla, poblano or other mild green chiles
Chop a cup of green onions
Mix it all together and pour into a buttered dish to bake at 350 for about an hour or until set.
I used a deeper corning ware dish , if you used a flatter baking dish, like a 9x12 it will probably bake faster and be drier.  I think sprinkling some grated cheese over top, cheddar or jack or a combo would be a good addition too.