The Straw Mattress

Moving to a new house, we found ourselves in need of a mattress. Given the problems with buying one new (expensive, toxic, resource intensive) and the desire to make things ourselves from simple materials, we decided to try making one from straw. There wasn't very much information on this online (except for this awesome article), but it seemed worth trying. I sewed a tick (the cloth casing) from thick cotton canvas curtains I found at a thrift store plus a few more yards from a fabric store. I spent about $20 on fabric altogether. Then we stuffed it with straw. It took 2-3 bales of straw to fill the tick, including discarded straw (it had rained the day I got the bales and some of the straw was damp). We did this just before Halloween, so we were able to get bales of straw for just $4 each from a church display selling pumpkins.

Stuffing the tick.

Fully stuffed mattress, looking comically overstuffed.

The finished straw mattress more compressed.

After sleeping on this mattress for two months, I will call it a success! It was inexpensive and easy to make. The most time-intensive part was designing and sewing the tick. I find it very comfortable and cozy. The straw is fluffy when you first lay on it, but quickly compresses down into a more firm texture. One big difference between the straw mattress and a conventional mattress is that the straw mattress is not "springy". Jumping on the bed does not have the same effect. It also has a tendency to develop an uneven surface, making a little "nest" where your body lays. The mattress can be re-fluffed as often as you'd like to make the straw fluffy and more even again. Or you can enjoy the firmer and pre-formed nest! Overall, if you are considering giving the straw mattress a try, in my experience at least, it is absolutely worth it.

A Calendar for the Willamette Valley

January

February

March

April -- Maple Moon (when Bigleaf maples expand their leaves)

May

June

July

August -- Blackberry Moon (when blackberries ripen)

September

October

November

December

To be updated!!

New Genera v. ii

More new genera, this time from eastern Oregon.

Chaenactis (Asteraceae)

Layia (Asteraceae)

Blepharipappus (Asteraceae)

Ionactis (Asteraceae)

Tetradymia (Asteraceae)

Amsinckia (Boraginaceae)

Alyssum (Brassicaceae)

Descurainia (Brassicaceae)

Lepidium (Brassicaceae)

Phoenicaulis (Brassicaceae)

Sisymbrium (Brassicaceae)

Holosteum (Caryophyllaceae)

Grayia (Chenopodiaceae)

Lathyrus (Fabaceae)

Camissonia (Onagraceae)

Gayophytum (Onagraceae)

Eriastrum (Polemoniaceae)

Navarretia (Polemoniaceae)

Ceratocephala (Ranunculaceae)

Myosurus (Ranunculaceae)

Plectritis (Valerianaceae)

Sauerkraut revisited

I made my first batch of sauerkraut in December of 2009. Since that experiment I've had many successful ferments (and started using a real fermenting crock rather than a fish bowl), but my most recent batch may just be an epic failure.

Making a tasty ferment is always a combination of factors -- temperature, bacteria, and timing all play together in a chemical, biological dance. Prior to my most recent batch, I'd only made my kraut in the Pacific NW fall; a fall with reliably high humidity. But a reliable characteristic of my current home is aridity. 

On a sunny fall day I sought out a pair of hefty cabbages at the Santa Fe farmer's market. I cradled them like babies, brought them home, and did the usual -- fine chopping, squishing with salt, and packing into my 2 gallon crock. I was impressed with the brine created from the cabbage's liquid. It covered the cabbage by a couple inches, so I didn't need to add any additional brine. 

Fast forward a few days, and I check on my kraut. All of that beautiful brine evaporated! The cabbage was exposed to air, and I needed to add more liquid. Somewhere in my head I knew that I should add a brine solution (water + salt) and not just plain water. The correct salt concentration discourages the growth of gross bacteria. But I was feeling extra experimental that fateful day, or overly confident in my healthy batch of kraut, or lazy, and I decided to use plain tap water to resubmerge the cabbage. 

Fast forward a few more days, and the kraut has an amazingly hairy growth of mold. I scoop it out with a big spoon, and the whole mat clings together like a weird kombucha scoby. I dig deeper into the crock and happily find that its innards are crunchy, delicious, and developing excellent kraut sourness and flavor. I fill a jar for the fridge, then pack the rest back together and place the crock gently in its fermenting corner, confident that it will be a fine batch.

But then the jar in the fridge grows soft. I fear for the whole batch, and open it (after 40 days at ~60-70 degrees F). It seems softer than normal. But it's tangy. And the smell is... interesting? I swear I detect notes of chocolate, but then I have a weird nose. All of this begs some questions: can soft sauerkraut be okay? and are my vague memories of someone telling me about their grandmother's sauerkraut crocks, and how they had a layer of mold, true? If the kraut is delicious, I will eat it. Go bravely into your fermenting future!

New Genera

Now in New Mexico, I'm surrounded by new plants.
A list of some of the genera I'm becoming familiar with here!

Abronia (Nyctaginaceae)
Apocynum (Apocynaceae)
Atriplex (Amaranthaceae)
Bouteloua (Poaceae)
Dalea (Fabaceae)
Dimorphocarpa (Brassicaceae)
Fallugia (Rosaceae)
Gutierrezia (Asteraceae)
Heterotheca (Asteraceae)
Hordeum (Poaceae)
Hymenoxys (Asteraceae)
Ipomopsis (Polemoniaceae) -- Ipomopsis sancti-spiritus! 
Krascheninnikovia (Chenopodiaceae)
Linum (Linaceae)
Lotus (Fabaceae)
Machaeranthera (Asteraceae)
Mirabilis (Nyctaginaceae)
Monarda (Lamiaceae)
Physaria (Brassicaceae)
Ratibida (Asteraceae)
Rhus (Anacardiaceae)
Sphaeralcea (Malvaceae)
Thelesperma (Asteraceae)
Thermopsis (Fabaceae)
Verbena (Verbenaceae)
Xanthisma (Asteraceae)

An Abundance of Strange and New Plants

I feel like I've been around the world lately, even though in truth I've visited just a few new corners of the US.

Travelling through Idaho, I stumbled upon the stunning Thomas Canyon campground, and two of my favorite plants in flower: Balsamorhiza sagittata, and Viola purpurea.

Balsamorhiza sagittata (arrowleaf balsamroot) in the Ruby Mountains' Thomas Canyon campground

Viola purpurea (goosefoot violet)

At the Chicago Botanic Garden, I experienced in person for the first time two very charismatic plants: Taxodium distichum (bald cypress), and Theobroma cacao (cacao tree)!

Taxodium distichum. The knees, the knees!!

Theobroma cacao flowers. They didn't really smell like chocolate. And why the heck do they come straight out of the bark? Why oh why, and how?

In the Chicago Botanic Garden's arid greenhouse, I had the privilege of meeting a whole bunch of dry-adapted carbon-fixers.

Cactus flower

weird!

This Time of Year Again

Daffodils and Oemleria blooming - classic and sure signs of spring in Portland, OR

 

Snail Eggs

Looking closely in my aquarium, I found a small surprise -- snail eggs! Magnified 10x with hand lens.  

 

Fall Flowers

Caught a whiff of something just like spring, and found these flowers blooming in October.

Equisetum Forest

A mini-forest of horsetail (Equisetum) sprouts on the floor of the Connor trail drainage this spring.

Adiantum (maidenhair fern) expanding

 

How Spring Happens Here, Part Two: Canopy closure

If we were to rename the local months in the style of Native Americans, April might be Moon of Bigleaf Expansion. Now the year's crop of giant leaves of Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) is small but rapidly expanding; now the leafy curtain partitioning interior urban forest from exterior is unfolding.

Phylogeny of the Boxes

Box: that which contains (particularly with straight lines and right angles).
Sometimes the human world seems like just a series of nested containers.
What exactly are we containing?

Sensing with soles

walking barefoot
each step is a new page
in an unfolding book
compared to wearing shoes and the constant
smooth smooth sameness

Potholes as street planters

What do you see? A street in need of repair, or an opportunity to plant flowers? A crack in the facade of impermeable surfaces? An invitation for life to take root?

In the environmental fantasy Ecotopia (1975, Ernest Callenbach), a reporter from the east coast has finally been allowed into Cascadia, long seceded from the United States. He writes about his first impressions of the transformed streets of San Francisco:

"Since practically the whole street area is "sidewalk," nobody worries about obstructions - or about the potholes which, as they develop in the pavement, are planted with flowers."

One of my dearest dreams for Portland also shows up in Ecotopia:
"The bucolic atmosphere of the new San Francisco can perhaps best be seen in the fact that, down Market Street and some other streets, creeks now run. These had earlier, at great expense, been put into huge culverts underground, as is usual in cities. The Ecotopians spent even more to bring them up to ground level again. So now on this major boulevard you may see a charming series of little falls, with water gurgling and splashing, and channels lined with rocks, trees, bamboos, ferns. There even seem to be minnows in the water - though how they are kept safe from marauding children and cats, I cannot guess."

Nettles 2015

March 7 this year, nettles at prime picking height

2014

2010

How Spring Happens Here, Part One: Old leaves, new leaves

In our mild Pacific Northwest winters, some plants keep a portion of their leaves all through that rainy season. It's as if, in the fall, environmental signals aren't quite harsh enough to push plants into total dormancy. In spring, bursting buds push out fresh growth to contrast with the leaves still left from last year.

(Questions: how much energy is gained from wintered-over leaves? seems introduced plants from harsher climates are most likely to display this pattern, true? is there a pattern (location?) as to which leaves are kept? and, when are these kept leaves finally lost?)

it's happening!

There is a certain small evergreen bush I spend most of my time overlooking, but every year at the very earliest part of spring it snags me by the nose. Sweet and promising, unexpected perfume of its freshly opened, hidden flowers sits in clouds along city streets.

Other spring precursors:

 

Stellaria media happy and green, growing as a mini-forest on urban mulch unmolested.

An arrangement of green-headed matches, suggesting buds yet unburst.

Tuesday, January Six

Ceremonial deforestation in Pioneer Square 

Christmas 2014 is over

precocious growth

Soft new leaves of the next growing season: waterleaf, Hydrophyllum
Spotted in Marquam 12/27/2014.

Circling

Today my patch of urban forest felt like the BIG woods. Shortly after noon I set out for a short loop hike; the sky was clear and blue, and I could pinpoint the location of the sun in the sky: low, as we near the winter solstice. The air was sunny and warm, yet creeks were noisy with recent rainstorm run-off. This unusual combination took my imagination to much, much larger forest systems.

As I left the canopy to return to boxes and paved streets, I saw chunks of cloud flying north across the sky, then a grey mass covered the recently sunny southern sky. A REALLY gusty system blew in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I move about the city by foot or bike, I often experience conflicts with motorized traffic, much of it mental (or nasal, but that's another story). Why do we devote our cities to over-sized, noisy, stinky machines? My attitudes range from fear, to aggression, to imagining traffic as a great herd of metal cattle. Recently, this story jumped to mind and seemed most apt (retold in my own words as I don't know the source):

One day, the wind said to the sun, "See that woman there? I bet you I can take off her big coat."
So the wind blew down upon the woman, but she only tightened up the buttons on her coat. The wind blew harder, but she wrapped her arms about herself.
Then the sun said, "Let me try." He looked out from behind a cloud, and the woman relaxed her arms. He stepped full into the sky, warming everything below, and the woman took off her coat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

winter here
curl into a ball under covers
gently hold my heart

think of ice mountains
on a scale i can not fathom
be still, till clarity of mind returns

(journal entry Nov. 2010)