One day's salad, the next day's compost

A sign of summer and the end of spring: I pulled up the last of our lettuce and arugula (a spring crop), today, to make room for the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers we hope to have a bounty of come late summer.

We had definitely enjoyed some nice salads from these leafy greens, but they had -- as is their like as the weather warms -- begun to go to seed and become more tough and bitter. So, instead of putting these last of the greens on our dinner plates, I am allowing them to 'compost-in-place' to form a sort of mulch along with the sheets of wet newspaper you can see 'between-the-hills' in the pic above. The hills themselves have been newly planted with cucumber seeds (I am afraid our local groundhog may find the seedlings-to-come to be tasty, but I am hoping he/she will leave at least some of them for us!).

One (non-chemical!) defense against the likes of our furry groundhog friend and the beetles that have already ravaged some of our tomato plants is the upside-down planting method, which we tried out successfully last year. We're experimenting now with some irrigation methods for the upside downers (note the 'upside down' two-liter A&W bottle in the foreground below). This page, taught us how to do this, although, as is our wont, we refused to actually follow the instructions! :)

From Planting Day (6/12/11)

Gardening -- like bicycling -- is an important means of self care for me amid the challenges (and joys!) of being in ministry. Last summer, it was a great gift to me to be able to spend early mornings quietly tending to our little backyard garden before getting ready to head to my busy workday of teaching a chaplaincy summer program. This summer -- while I have the new joy of being able to spend time in New York City, the place of my birth -- I will less often be able to walk out to my garden first thing in the morning. I was glad to be able to be able to be in it for a few hours, today!

For a moving reflection on how your backyard might be a source of spiritual nourishment, see the words of our friend and teacher Natan Margalit on his Organic Torah blog.

Have a great week!

Getting in touch with our (dirty!) hands

From Early Spring Planting Day 2011

One of my favorite parts of counting the Omer with Minna every night during this season from Passover to Shavuot is when she recites the final words of the meditation before the blessing:

וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ, כּוֹנְנָה עָלֵינוּ; וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ, כּוֹנְנֵהוּ
The works of our hands -- establish them for us! The works of our hands, establish them!

These words -- a quote of the Psalmist (Ps. 90) imploring God to do this establishing -- came to mind, today, as I was working with my hands (and getting dirt under my fingernails) in the little garden in our backyard. It felt especially satisfying to transplant the four little plants in the picture above -- we not only grew each one from seed, but we had saved the seeds from plants we had grown last year. (We had even taken some of the seeds -- soaking in water as they must for a few days before you dry them -- on a short bicycle tour we took to Lancaster County at the end of last summer.)

I stand in my own sort of middle space right now during this middle time in the 50-day count of the Omer -- a short break between a very busy (but productive!) semester of graduate study at NYU and an exciting return soon to the role of a chaplaincy educator/supervisor in a busy summer in a CPE program at The Jewish Theological Seminary (which starts on Monday). In this middle time, it is important for me to care for my spirit as much as I can. Cycling and gardening are two of the most important ways I engage in that self care, so I felt really centered and happy, today, as I worked my hands in the dirt.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that all the work of your hands shall be upheld -- firmly established! And may your own summer be a productive and joyful one.

**************



Another sign of Spring has been these baby birds hatching in a nest their parents built in our porch light. Minna took this picture only a little more than a week ago, but already all of these little guys have (literally) flown the next.

Fly on, little guys!

The hunter becomes the hunted

This green guy is one of the greatest enemies of the tomato plant -- the dreaded Tomato Hornworm, which can make incredible amounts of tomato foliage disappear in no time at all (although Minna claims the end result is a most beautiful moth that some treasure).

This guy, however, has ended up as a meal for someone else -- or, rather, many someone elses (the white spots are wasp larvae).

So, as we come to the end of a most rewarding garden season, we aren't getting much in the way of tomatoes or cucumbers anymore -- but still plenty of fascinating lessons about how the world can work.

Purple harvest comes to Sag

Minna and I brought some of our backyard harvest -- including this Purple Cherokee that we planted upside down -- to Sag Harbor with us for a couple days of relaxation before we both head into busy fall seasons. The Cherokee was a truly delicious reminder of the best of what this summer has been for the both of us and of the harvests we hope for the future from the work we have been doing and the foundations we've been laying. The summer started with Minna's ordination and continued with her first summer working as as a rabbi. We ,moved into a little house (including a yard and central AC!). And I ran my third unit of summer chaplaincy education, and prepared to enter into my second year of doctoral study at NYU.

So we took this week for a little bit of relaxation between the great busy-ness we have behind and before us. The first three days were a little bike tour of around 70 miles total mostly around Amish country. We went through French Creek State Park -- where we had to navigate around a bridge that was out! -- on the first day. It was beautiful there amid the rain, but the best part was on the next day when we went on only a short ride from Morgantown to New Holland. It took us through some incredible Amish country where we saw many people working their fields with horses. As we came over one rise, we saw what was a very confusing scene at first -- a man with a team of four large horses standing at the edge of a cornfield. There was a mechanical roar as well, though. Why, we asked ourselves, would this man choose to use horses if he thought it was ok to use a mechanical tractor as well? And then we saw it -- eight huge horses, shoulder-to-shoulder, coming straight towards us through the corn. Four were pulling the most incredible muscle-powered machine I have ever seen -- a mechanical combine harvesting the corn without the aid of any electrical or internal combustion motor -- and the other four were pulling the huge cart the harvested corn was going into. We also saw a couple harvesting tobacco by hand in a field and we bought watermelon and nectarines from the people who grew them: incredible sights -- testaments to the faith of others, really -- mere miles from our home and from the tough urban streets of Reading, streets where blood is spilled much too often and where faith is a much-needed support for many, especially in these hard economic times.

I am grateful to the Blessed Holy One for the many harvests we have been able to enjoy in these days, including these precious few days of rest, and the wonderful weather we had today for a bike ride to the beach with Minna's parents, and a nice swim there.

_______________________

Here are a couple more pics of both the harvest and the ride -- and links to more pics of both:

Minna's parents (on left) riding by Long Beach From Bromberg beach ride 2010

Eggplants! From Harvest 2010 (August)

Looking forward to next year (saving seeds)

We harvested our first Purple Cherokee tomato, today. We only have a few fruits growing on the (upside down!) plant, so we decided that we need to start saving seeds from it now if we're going to use them grow our own plants from scratch next year. So, the seeds will sit in the jar above for three-days or so -- long enough for the gelatinous material around the seeds to dissolve in the water -- before we clean, dry and store them.

It's exciting to think we might be able to have a garden again next year!

More on how to save tomato seeds here.

PS The tomato itself was delicious!

Lunchtime harvest

Minna picked some cukes and tomatoes for our lunch, today. It was the biggest single-day's harvest of cucumbers we've gotten, yet (we try not to let them get as big as the one monster below, but we've discovered that if you peel and seed them, that they're still yummy).

From Lunchtime harvest

Bees, like this little bumble below, are part of what makes it all happen -- the wonders of pollination!

From Lunchtime harvest

Our tomato plants (as have our cukes) have grown into quite a jungle (see, below). I feel proud of its teemingness (I looked it up -- that's really a word), but I'm starting to understand why some people like to prune their tomatoes into orderly single stems.

From Lunchtime harvest

This one has so outgrown its little tomato cage that I found some scrap poles (actually an old cane and a mop handle) that a neighbor had thrown out to prop it up a bit.

From Lunchtime harvest

More pics can be found here.

I'm so grateful to be able to have a garden this year!

The Phoenix

A week ago, I had cut this then-bushy basil plant back to next to nothing -- now it's starting to come back with these little new leaves!

Here's a pic of the whole plant:



And here's a pic of our Wapsipinicon peach, which yielded our very first tomato of the season, a few days ago. It's growing at a fantastic pace now, with lots of tomatoes all over it. A couple more had ripened over Shabbat, so after Shabbat was over, Minna (by flashlight!) harvested two. They were really delicious, much better than the first one had been, so I'm really looking forward to the rest of these ripening!



Happy 4th of July!

______________________

Did you notice the new upgrade on Google Docs, by the way? They seem to have added a whole host of new features to make it more like a traditional word processor like Microsoft Word (including things like a ruler at the top of the page).

That seems to hold the promise of being able to control the printed appearance of documents in a way that was not possible before. But to get all those new features, they seem to have taken away a number of ones that were my favorite things about Google Docs. You don't seem to be able to post directly to your blog, anymore. And there's no more "hide controls" (which freed up a lot of screen space) or "edit html." I hope, at least, that soon they will add a "view draft" feature or something to allow you to get some of that screen real estate back.

Google does address some of these concerns here. This is some of what they say:

What else is different?

You'll probably notice that some features from the older version of Google documents aren't available yet. Don't worry: we'll be adding a lot of them soon.

These features from the previous version of Google documents, however, won't be available in the new version:

• Offline document access via Google Gears
• Edit HTML
• Edit CSS

Keyboard shortcuts have also changed. Check the list of new keyboard shortcuts.

You can continue to create documents in the older version, for now, by opting out of the new version. Simply go to your Google Docs Settings page, click the Editing tab, and deselect the option labeled "Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor."

Want to continue creating docs in the old version of Google documents? Let us know why in the Google Docs help forum.

Less is more -- pruning: in life, in gardening and in spiritual care

Up until about an hour ago, this poor guy was a very bushy, healthy-looking plant of basil. But, under the influence of this gardening video, I decided to prune it back almost to nothing -- all in the hope that I could slow down its growth, and thus extend its life.

I've been looking for ways to slow things down in my own life as well. I remember a couple of months ago, sitting on a couch with a fellow doctoral student at NYU and working on a project together. It was the first chance I ever had to really interact with this colleague, and I was surprised to find how

The stalks from the three plants I pruned From Pruning (late June)

much we had in common about how we thought about our lives and our work. For both of us, it is important to do more than one thing at a time. And, as challenging as it might be to try and do something like hold down two full-time pursuits at one time, that it was a kind of challenge that we both very much needed -- the contrast of having "feet in two different worlds" helped us to be more grounded. It helped us to not get caught up by our tendency to become obsessed with one thing, like that "one thing" is everything. It helped us keep our perspective both focused and balanced.

So, I hope not to give up this multi-tasking aspect of my life. But, over the last 12 months or so, it's been more like I had three full-time pursuits than just two and it's been quite a strain at times. Mostly, I feel incredibly proud of myself reflecting back on the last 12 months. I became a certified chaplain education (by being approved as an Associate Supervisor in the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) -- something that I achieved in about as short a time (less than three years) as is theoretically possible. I started a new path as a researcher of education (as a doctoral student in the Education and Jewish studies program at NYU). I found the time to go to some key conferences and meetings, including the Jerusalem Spiritual Care Conference (that included a historic delegation of American CPE supervisors, seeking to give Israelis guidance on how to set up their own professional spiritual care certification and training) and the National Association of Jewish Chaplains conference in Boston (where I gave a workshop on personal Midrash). I also recently attended both the Network for Research in Jewish Education conference where I presented some of my work to other education professionals, and the Oraita spiritual retreat where I studied ancient Jewish sources relating to spiritual (and self-) care with other rabbis. And I continued to work as a CPE (clinical pastoral education) supervisor amid all this, as well as finding time and energy to keep growing my relationship with Minna and to be her partner while she embarked on her own multi-task of starting work as the spiritual leader of a congregation, while finishing her five-year path towards rabbinic ordination.

But I've, nonetheless, been glad to have the change-of-pace that is my summer work -- where I am focused on mostly one task (running a full-time unit of CPE, with my six students, all either seminarians or people who recently finished their seminary education).

Here are the leaves that I picked from the stalks. From Pruning (late June)

It's a reminder that what I really love most is being a teacher -- the kind of teacher who has the privilege of having intense relationships with his or her students and the privilege of having the opportunity to perhaps have a profound impact on their respective journeys as people, as professional workers in ministry and as spiritual caregivers and leaders. Although I also very much want to be involved in research about education, all of my passion and insight for that research has its roots in my personal experience working with students.

So, for this summer I'm pruning myself back for a bit, trying to slow down some and focus in one area (as well as on things that are just fun and restorative, like gardening). My hope is that this pruning will yield not only immediate benefit (a more-rested, less-stressed Alan), but also will yield a richer harvest when I reenter the researcher/student part of my life when I return to NYU in the fall!

_____________

Getting back to my _real_ garden for a bit (ie, the one with plants and vegetables), I have some things I want to share beyond the pruning (by the way, if you're interested in learning how -- or if -- to prune tomatoes of their so-called "suckers", there's good info and a video here).

First, I was really excited to see our first flower on our eggplant, today, which means that there is some real hope of having our own crop of these most special of vegetables!

From Pruning (late June)

The excitement is because we've sometimes come close to losing hope for this plant. As you can see from the pics below, something is eating its leaves.

From Pruning (late June)

Here are a couple more pics showing the current state of progress:

Looking up at two of our upside-down ones -- a cuke in foreground and a tomato behind From Pruning (late June)

My hope is this one will grow enough that I can "train it" to the lattice of the fence (actually a door) here. From Pruning (late June)

Peppers starting to yield! From Pruning (late June)

And the cucumbers are starting to have their first flowers! From Pruning (late June)

And they are climbing up the strings I gave them to the top of the fence! From Pruning (late June)

First fruit

The peppers were the tortoise to the tomatoes' hare (translation: I had expected our tomatoes to yield the first fruits of the summer, but we ended up harvesting a pepper (yellow banana variety) as our very first fruit this very evening). We ate it raw as we stood outside -- it was delicious!

Thank You, Holy Blessed One, for sustaining us and upholding us and enabling us to once again reach this wonderful place!

All tied up

Well, I'm not much of a knot tier (and I've never grown cucumbers before), but I'm hoping that these guys will reach out their little tendrils (it's creepy; they really do grab ahold of things) and climb up the twine to the top of the fence here where I hope they will happily live on the trellises.

Meanwhile, the rest of the garden is starting to look like a jungle. It's been some 20 years since I've had the opportunity to grow plants in the ground (last year's efforts were all in containers). I think we might have our first tomatoes in two weeks or so!

Upside down!

Even though the full recommended week hadn't passed since I first put seedlings in my home-fashioned upside down planters (more about how I planted them here), I turned one of them this morning.

As of this evening (as I bbq-ed my dinner), it hadn't fallen out yet!

Here's a couple of other views of it:

From Planting upside down

Living large

Like many Americans, I have spent much of my life being larger than is considered to be healthy, and thus searching for a way that works to take (and keep!) off a few pounds. Exercise, of course is part of any successful effort. But "the gym" and other forms of working out for working out's sake are just not for me -- it bores me out of my mind, and doing such things in groups (they call that classes, I guess), which works for so many, is also not for me. So, my search for a good exercise life has always been a search for exercise I can get as part of transporting my body, etc., from place to place, or some other kid of activity that's main purpose is not the exercise itself. So, bicycle commuting, cargo biking (eg, grocery shopping by bike), walking to work, volunteering to help a friend move some boxes, hiking in a pretty place -- those have been the ways I've sought exercise.

The last few weeks, now that we've moved into a small house with a little bit of a backyard, I've been able to reconnect with another by-the-way means of getting exercise -- gardening. Now, gardening doesn't have to involve much sweat, but I double-dug the two plots to the right with a fairly small shovel, and that was a lot of work! Of course, the exercise benefit is hardly an ongoing thing, but I'm really hoping (especially, if we avoid a reoccurred of the late blight fungus that meant we only got a small -- but yummy! -- yield from the tomatoes we planted in containers last year on our small porch in our small apartment) for another benefit: lots of healthful eating in the summer. Lots and lots of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers especially -- that's what I hope for. That would be really living large!

I am grateful to be able to have a chance to grow things, again. Years of living in apartments in in cities have meant I went quite a few years without a place to grow anything. The main benefit of gardening, of course, isn't really either the exercise or the produce. It's what it can do for your soul. The feel of God's earth in your hands. The joy of watching something grow. This year, we even grew most of our tomato plants from seed ourselves -- some of them seeds we saved ourselves from the Mr. Stripey tomatoes we enjoyed so much last year. (That's some of the seedlings, below, sitting on top of our compost bin).

_____________________

One way of trying to stem off the effects of another possible blight is just to plant a lot of tomatoes of different varieties (last year the blight didn't kill off our plants, but just reduced their yield -- we lost a lot of tomatoes to disgusting looking fungus on them!). Today, I went even farther than before in my search for tomato variety. I had heard about planting tomatoes upside down before, but it was only after reading this recent New York Times article that I started to think seriously about trying it. I followed the instructions on this web page for making upside down planters out of five-gallon paint buckets (about $4 each with the lids at Home Depot). That's me to the left carrying the new containers to their temporary homes -- they live upside-up for about a week to build a root system. Once that's done, we'll flip them over and hang them from somewhere sunny

(You can find more pics of how I handled this task here.)

One thing that made me especially excited about today's plantings is that we found some Purple Cherokee's at the local farmer's market (from this vendor). We had bought one from the same folks last year and really enjoyed the few of its fruits that were not taken by the blight, but we hadn't been able to find any until now -- the first day of the year the farmer's market was open!

We also found some horseradish plants at the farmer's market, which we had been having trouble finding. It's late in the season for planting horseradish, but I'm still hoping to have some of my own homegrown "bitter herbs" at my next seder!

It was a fun day of planting!

Dreaming of summer -- and tomatoes!

It's been such beautiful spring weather lately that we've mostly just been trying to enjoy the "now." But in one way we've been thinking ahead. We've planted some tomatoes inside from seed with hopes of transplanting them in the ground later. Some of the seeds were ones we saved from a tomato plant -- from the Mr. Stripey variety -- that we really enjoyed last year.

It was great to see the little "Mr. Stripey's" start to make their way into the world!

First tomatoes

These cherry guys are still green, but we did get our first two ripe tomatoes off of two of our full-size plants, today -- they were delicious!

Yeah, it's a bit late for the first tomatoes, but we got them in the ground kind of late. Well, and not really in the ground, too (as we have no ground). Here they are in their containers:



Some of the leaves, however, are looking a little sad, which had us worried with all this talk about an epidemic of tomato fungus:





I'm trying to stay hopeful, though and am looking forward to these guys turning red!



[X-posted to smamitayim]