To mulch, or not to mulch?
July 8, 2008 | 8:44 pm
7/8/08
I never mulch my garden. I should. Every year I regret not doing so and plan to mulch thoroughly next year. The cycle turns, yet again I fail to mulch. Why?
Hmm. Let’s see.
First, too many choices. This is where gardening books discourage rather than inspire me. Everyone is an expert, everyone has their preferences, and no clear, correct path emerges from the information overload. As well, I either don’t have the spare cash to buy many bags of commercial mulch, or enough clean, useful stuff lying around my yard to use.
Then there’s conflicting information about when to mulch and how much to apply. I always seem to be out of synch with the weather, and it happens that my workflow for the year peaks during gardening season, so I’m always short on time. Some experts claim that mulch gives an environment for undesirables, like slugs, to thrive in. Other experts say that mulch interferes with water getting into the soil as well as keeps it from getting out. Who to believe?
Almost every expert claims that mulch keeps weeds down or prevents them altogether. Um, what planet do they live on? My weeds can get through anything!
So far, my garden has done fine without mulch. The only thing that ever looks like a problem is when a dry spell is followed by a hard rain. Then crusty surface soil splatters onto leaves, and soil might wash away from the base of stems.
What keeps me wondering is that I see so many fabulous gardens, both live and in books, that appear to be deeply mulched (and fertilized with tons of manure — which is also difficult for me to acquire in any meaningful amount).
Such head-scratchers are what moved me to write “Open Your Heart with Gardens.” Experience has proven that there’s no One True Method for gardening. No matter what technique we use, I and thousands of others successfuly grow plants we eat or admire every year. So there must be something more than technique involved. Something personal, and open to deviation. So much of our lives are constrained by rules; but in the garden, rules are open to interpretation, and reversal, and we are free to tinker with them. Gardens let us be who we are more than most other areas of life.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Rules of the Game, Opening the heart, Learning something new, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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Hay bale basics
June 23, 2008 | 9:07 pm
June 24, 2008
This year I’m repeating last year’s experiment: growing tomatoes in hay bales.
Those of you who’ve read the book will recognize this project. For those who haven’t, the idea is that as the hay bale decays, it will feed the plant. It’s a self-contained compost parcel. All you have to do is water. Last year I inserted drip cones into the bales so water went directly to the roots rather than ran off the top of the tightly packed surface. It worked so well, I repeated the setup this year.
Last year, I planted two tomatoes, two zucchinis, and two peppers in three haybales, and got one humongous zucchini plant and one extravagant tomato plant, both of which bore lots of fruit. The zucchini did well right away, but the tomato took a while to settle before taking off. The other plants languished. The hay bales were only half rotted when I tore down the garden in the fall.
This year, I planted just two tomatoes, each in its own bale. They’ve been struggling since day one; now are noticeably yellow, suggesting malnutrition, though they have grown several inches and produced flowers.
It’s a head-scratcher. What’s so different between last year and this?
First, I got the hay bales from different people. I don’t know what kind of hay it was/is, but this year’s bales are looser, seemingly fresher. So perhaps last year’s had started decarying before I got them.
Second, hay bales are actually compressed stacks of sheaves, giving a directional component. Last year, I had to carve holes against the grain to insert my plants; this year, I went with the grain, so the sheaves separated without a fight. This probably changes water retention, and creates a different challenge for the plants’ root systems.
Third, we haven’t had as much rain this year, and last year’s bales sat out in it, plant-less, for several soggy weeks. Another reason to suspect better-rotted bales to start.
This year, not sure what to do about my struggling tomatoes, I worked some pelletized plant food into the bale at the base of the plants then lightly mulched the area. Tomorrow I’ll probably cut off the lower, most severely yellowed leaves. Then I’ll wait. Not much choice, for there’s no book out there devoted to hay bale gardening, nor an experienced guru in the neighborhood. The Internet contains lots of information, but I found it contradictory when I researched the subject in the first place, so tuned it out.
The problem seems obvious: The hay isn’t rotting fast enough to feed the plants adequately. Next year I’ll try to get the bales earlier, or else give the plants a better start by making a bigger hole in the bale and jamming it with soil and compost so the plants have something to draw from during the early phase. Or take some of that Internet advice and soak it with a hose first.
All this negates the original appeal of the system, which was elegant simplicity. I might as well put the plants in a regular garden if the hay bales are just going to serve as large, messy containers!
I’ll let you know how it comes out at the end of the summer.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, Learning something new, Difficulty, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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Sharing Presentations
February 6, 2008 | 4:15 pm
I was scheduled to present a program on geocaching at the Manchester City Library this past weekend – an introduction to the hobby, with the caveat that I’d be able to sell copies of Open Your Heart with Geocaching at the event.
Unsure of how many people would attend, I decided to also make it into an event cache. What that means is that it was given a title (”Open Your Heart”) and listed at geocaching.com, thus drawing in people in the area who have already joined Groundspeak, the parent company of geocaching.com.
What actually happened was amazing – 25 people came out on a gloomy winter afternoon to learn more about opening their hearts through geocaching! I sold some books, the refreshments from Carem’s Cakes were appreciated by everyone, and several attendees have already joined and are starting geocaching. I’ll be doing presentations at the library on an ongoing basis, and hopefully more and more people will learn about this fabulous hobby.
It’s enough to … open one’s heart!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: geocaching books, Opening the heart, Learning something new, Happiness, Joy — jcezanne
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Opening Your Heart to New Things
January 23, 2008 | 9:10 am
That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. I was given an iTunes gift card for Christmas (thank you, père Noel!) and wondered what, in my vast shopping cart, I’d choose to buy. I spend a fair amount of time in my car, traveling either to Connecticut for a site visit to a client or to Provincetown for my own times of feeding my soul, and so the tunes I put on my iPod are carefully chosen.
I like to howl along as I drive, you see.
But this time I hesitated. I looked in my journal where I’d written a few musicians’ names with question marks beside them. I remembered the NPR story about another artist I’d heard recently. And so, after thinking abou adding these new voices to my world, I listened to the scraps iTunes allows, and I spent my gift card.
Last night I drove down to Provincetown and listened to all my New Music. And the experience proved to be both challenging and exhilarating: not knowing what was next on the playlist. Okay, so for most people that is probably not a big deal; but there’s more than a little obsessive-compulsive disorder in me, and it was a stretch.
And maybe that’s the best word to use for that sort of thing: stretch. I’m seeing a physical therapist for headaches, and he is working with me to stretch my neck, to improve my range of motion. Very uncomfortable indeed, but my muscles — like my musical repertoire — could do with a little stretching.
What would be a stretch for you today? Can you challenge yourself in one small thing, step outside of your comfort zone, try something new or different? The stretch isn’t comfortable, but most of the good things in life aren’t.
So that’s my challenge to you this week: find a place where you can stretch your boundaries, your assumptions, your comfort zone. And tell me how it goes!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, Learning something new, Difficulty — jcezanne
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Happy 2008!
January 1, 2008 | 11:43 am
I’m working on a novel right now that takes place in 1942, and recently accessed a stack of newspapers from June of that year. Each copy cost five cents, though one is invited to subscribe for a year for two dollars. A strawberry social is announced at the Unitarian church. A local boy is featured in a children’s book about a dog. Tourists are in town, though pedaling bicycles rather than riding in cars. The community center is being remodeled to provide brighter and cheerier places for servicemen to attend dances and other functions. And the dragger Liberty is towed in by the dragger Stella when she develops clutch problems out at sea.
Josephine Tey wrote that history is not in accounts, but in account-books. And she is so right. I’ve read dozens of books now about World War II, about 1942 in particular, about the homefront in New England; but these newspapers are what really make me feel I understand the time in which my character lived.
What does that have to do with opening your heart? Plenty. As the new year begins, it’s a good reminder to look behind the easily accessible information, behind the obvious, and see what’s really there. To not be contented with the “accounts” we receive from biased sources — about news, about individuals, about situations — and see what the people really experiencing them have to say.
It’s going to be a great year for opening the heart!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, Learning something new — jcezanne
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Lost But Not Forgotten
December 19, 2007 | 1:43 pm
I haven’t been geocaching much recently — a terrible admission from someone who wrote the book on it! — mostly because of either bad timing or bad weather; but it’s never far from my mind.
In fact, I’m planning the placement of my next cache as we speak!
I’m teaming up with a fellow cacher (and history enthusiast), “MuchAdo,” to put together a cache that will take participants on a tour of Manchester, New Hampshire. But wait, those of you who have read my book are saying, isn’t that already one of your caches? Indeed it is: Dark Satanic does take cachers on a tour of Manchester’s mill history. This is a different sort of tour.
It’s a tour of places that are no longer there.
Manchester has a plethora of them: the old zoo, washed away in a flood; the grand hotel with tram access, gone with the passing of the era of grand hotels; the city jail, of which only the doorway remains; and many, many more places. And as MuchAdo and I work with the concept – mostly done over microbrews at Millie’s – I keep wondering about all the other ruins, all the other lost places in all of our communities, the places that once were important to people who used to live where we live now.
What is the point in keeping up with them? Why should these places mean anything to us now?
It’s a little like families, I think. We may not be our pasts, but our pasts are part of who we are. Just as we inherited our families’ DNA, we inherit the stories of the places where we live. Remembering them will keep them alive; and maybe we owe that to our communities, to our history.
What are the lost places in your community?
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Geocaching, Opening the heart, Learning something new, Joy — jcezanne
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Opening Your Heart
December 12, 2007 | 12:44 pm
It’s something that I keep coming back to … as I promote my own books and the series as a whole, I’m always talking about opening the heart; but I really wonder what that means to different people.
I think about it every time I do manuscript consultation on an Open Your Heart book, finding that even within our series, authors have very different concepts of what opening one’s heart means, both in terms of how much they’re willing to open up … and in terms of what they feel is appropriate to share with readers. And I think about it every time I’m on a radio show or doing a print interview, as the interviewer reflects back to me her or his conceptualization of what I’m expressing.
It makes me wonder what a reader is thinking — is expecting — when she picks up one of the series books and opens it to the first page … to a random page … and reads some of the words there. What is he looking for? Does the book he picked up respond to that need?
What is opening the heart? What does it mean to others? What does it mean to you?
– Jeannette Cézanne
htp://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: reading, Opening the heart, Learning something new — jcezanne
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Learn How to Get Your Spiritual Writing Published, Part Three
November 25, 2007 | 2:18 am
You’ve decided you want to write, and you know it’s for all the right reasons: You’re truly inspired and want to share your words with others (see parts one and two of this series on this blog).
Now what?
How do you actually get started? How do you overcome the blank piece of paper and the hopelessly white computer screen?
Try writing a “Dear Reader” letter. Imagine what your ideal reader looks like, and then write a letter to that person, letting your thoughts flow. What do you want to say? This technique will help get you started and get the words moving.
Posted by: writing, writing books, Publishing, Opening the heart, Learning something new — Meg
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Library of America
November 13, 2007 | 7:03 pm
I just have to write about the Library of America.
It happened quite coincidentally, but I’d been working with them in another professional context — doing search engine optimization — when I began writing Open Your HEart with Reading, and the timing couldn’t have been better.
The Library of America is a nonproft publisher dedicated to publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing.
Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as the “quasi-official national canon” of American literature, The Library of America each year adds new volumes collecting essential novels, stories, poetry, plays, essays, journalism, historical writing, speeches, and more.
A new and comprehensive series called the American Poets Project presents the most significant American poetry, selected and introduced by today’s most distinguished poets and critics, in inexpensive, elegantly designed, and textually authoritative hardcover editions.
These books are gorgeous, folks, and looking through the website is an education in American literature. Take some time to visit the Library of America and subscribe to its newsletter; if you have any interest at all in reading, you won’t be disappointed.
It was through the Library of America that I met many of the authors who today delight and amaze me. I suspect that you will find that experience true for you, also.
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: reading, reading books, Opening the heart, Learning something new — jcezanne
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