Things I experienced today.... Learning how and when to harvest lettuce seed,
how to establish 5 types of nurseries (ack can i name them all? permanent, swiss, common, seed flat and polytube. hot damn!),
breathing and sweeping and scrubbing more rat poop and urine than I ever wanted to encounter in my life while vigorously doing a total overhaul/deep cleaning of our seed bank,
attacking weevils,
learning that Ni Ni likes kidney beans,
harvesting lemongrass to help with the odor problem in the seed bank,
watering my sunflower seedlings, makhemia lutea tree sprouts and hibiscus cuttings which frankly may have already died for all I know,
practicing diagonal offset planting of onion seedlings in our double dug bed,
companion planting with mexican marigolds and kale with the onions in addition to black nightshade (these 4 were all in the same small bed),
witnessing a new and strikingly gorgeous bird (small with a charcoal bottom and bright blue and red on top),
learning bananas take forever in the solar dehydrator even on a day when you can get a sunburn, seeing one of our field staff that has been living in a community not so close by,
riding home in a car while confusing the rat pee on my clothes with the stench of giant, male pig from the addition to the center earlier in the day via the back of the van,
teaching the kids knock knock jokes at home after dinner -what a riot,
washing Jack with my tea tree and lavender dog shampoo (way to go small town Kenyan grocery store!),
learning that the best way to deal with weevil eggs all over a collection of seeds is to plant the suckers right away,
discovering lavender chamomile tea and really really liking it,
feeling old from being sore from my 40 minute yoga session day before yesterday,
preparing to meet with PELUM (Participatory Ecological Land Use Management association) tomorrow morning, or this morning technically speaking,
internet chatting with three friends and my sister,
suddenly loving the taste of cooked cabbage when a couple of weeks ago I never wanted to see it again. ever.
hand washing some towels, still nostalgic about hand washing and love the arm workout,
witnessing bumblebees the size of a quarter buzzing around overhead,
eating stale peanuts for lunch,
learning that I adore the smell of local, Kenyan sunflower seeds,
a hug with one of my favorite women at the center.
seeing a glorious, fluorescent red dragonfly as I dipped a watering can in the trench several times.
finally knowing by heart the 3:2:1 ratio for seeds and what the heck it means,
joking about how to say "biointensive" in Swahili and I can't even remember it now,
noticing i need more sleep!
hugs to all!
4 comments:
OK... so what is the 3:2:1 ratio for seeds anyway? I love "seeing" Kenya through your eyes. Hugs, Momma
for seed flats:
use 3 parts topsoil, 2 parts well-cured compost, and 1 part sand. mix them all together and water before either broadcasting or row planting seeds. (Cover with dry grass) hugs back.
Um, so a picture of the WILD do would be xllent ;-)
Favorite knock knock joke: you say "ok you go first" ....they say "ok, knock knock" ....you say "who's there?" ....enjoy the look of total confusion ;-0
Love ya, Uncle David
Well luckily, I only left the Wild 'Do in for one (what seemed like veeeeery long thanks to many stares from colleagues) day. No pictures sadly. I can tell you that I looked like a 6 year old girl whose mother didn't know what she was doing when she attempted to put braids in her daughter's hair, then the girls slept with it braided for a week and after that walked around and got pieces of the braids stuck in tree branches so big chunks were sticking out of the braids in a very non-symmetrical way. So hope that description helps.
Haha I remember doing that knock knock joke with the boys. It's a good one : ).
Love to you and L,M,B
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