Luzula

Our flock of twelve ducks now number thirteen and occasionally fourteen. Duck #13 is the neighbours' sole surviving duck after the others were taken by a fox (probably). He was keeping them outside. Ours are in a polytunnel inside an enclosure, but I think a determined fox could still get inside. Augh, I hope they survive the winter. Duck #13 is white and looks a lot like our Elsa, but smaller and with a more orange beak; we call her Lill-Elsa (Little Elsa). She has seamlessly merged with the flock.

The occasional #14 is a female wild mallard who seems to be considering the advantages of domestication: free food, water, and shelter! But she comes and goes. One might think our ducks would correspondingly be hearing the call of the wild from her, but no. They like their comforts now. The snow is thawing and I thought I'd make them happy by breaking up the ice in the small pond for them, but when I herded them outside to see it, they just stood there and looked at me like I was committing animal abuse, and hurried back to the polytunnel as soon as I got out of the way. Sigh.

As for me, I am too busy and am looking forward to things calming down a little soon. At least I hope they will.

Joke stolen from the_siobhan, because it was too good not to.

( Read more... )

I roasted the following in the oven with olive oil and salt: parsnips, parsley root, potatoes, carrots, yellow beets, acorn squash. To go with that, I took the baby summer squash and baby butternuts and put them in an oven pan, covered with a mix of bread crumbs, butter, basil, hazelnuts run in a blender, and grated parmesan cheese (I almost, but not quite, reinvented pesto there...). On the side, there was baba ganoush, and also fresh shelled beans in butter, chopped parsley, salt, and juice from flowering quince (which I use as a lemon replacement). Can recommend!

There were four vegetables from the garden in this meal that we tasted for the first time:
- Parsnips (I generally like parsnips, but hmm, ours were not top notch somehow. They were also a bit small and skinny, so perhaps a little more manure for them next year.)
- Parsley root (I had never had this before--it does taste of parsley, but also a bit earthy and mealy. I wasn't a huge fan, and as it also didn't sprout well, we might not grow this again.)
- Acorn squash (Yes! I loved the rich and nutty taste, and this was one I picked because I thought it didn't look quite mature, and it was still delicious. Will grow again, and more of it.)
- Greek Gigantes runner beans (Yum! Huge white beans, creamy and buttery and tasty. I thought at first that they hadn't been that productive, which is true in terms of number of beans, but they're so huge that if you go by weight they were still cropping well.)

I'm doing well! I've been home for a few days now, after spending a week at the family summer place with my parents, my sister, and her kids. A good time was had, with no family quarrels! \o/

Before that, I had a visit from exeterlinden and her two kids. We had not met in person for eight years (because kids), and had very little contact during that time, but we just reconnected instantly. It was lovely. <3

Current delicious produce from the garden: potatoes, swedes, young beets and carrots, cabbage, chard, leek, onions, garlic, herbs, broad beans, green beans, green peas, zucchini, aubergine, tomatoes, and chiles. I LOVE just going out and harvesting what I need for cooking! We just took up all the onions, and they are now drying in the sun. I think they will be a substantial portion of our yearly consumption.

Today I got one of the ducks to eat from my hand, by means of lying down prone on the grass and stretching out my hand with food on it. They are such ridiculous little duck-billed dinosaurs. Edvin who was previously one of our favorites has unfortunately turned into a schoolyard bully, perhaps because the males from the first group of ducklings from the spring are now old enough to be seen as a threat to his fragile masculinity. The second group of ducklings are now almost full-sized, and we can see their adult colors, though not yet what sex they are.

I hardly ever buy cook books, but a while ago I bought two by the same author, which fit my current needs perfectly: the first one has chapters on various vegetables, and the second on various fruits and berries, so if you've got a particular vegetable/fruit/berry, you can get recipes and inspiration as to what to do with it. They are in Swedish though. He's big on using fruits and berries in savory cooking, and here's a delicious recipe I made yesterday: ( Read more... )

One of our ducks vanished during the day, in all probability taken by a fox. I can't imagine she would stay away from feeding time of her own free will, so something must have happened to her. Obviously we lock them up at night, but they don't wander far from the house and garden during the day, so we thought there wasn't much danger in broad daylight. But no.

When we asked in the village group chat, it turns out several neighbors had had chickens taken during the day by foxes! Would have been nice if they had warned the neighbors about this, instead of using the group chat for useless and annoying suspicion of strangers walking down the road (a completely unremarkable thing for people to do).

I don't blame the fox for doing its foxy thing, obviously. But I am more sad than I expected to be about the duck. They are such funny and endearing creatures--I had grown quite fond of them all, and this one was one of my favorites. She was the younger female, often the first to come running at feeding time, and had been amusing and annoying us with her desultory brooding habits. Runner ducks apparently don't reliably brood, but she was often doing it, so we left her some eggs to let her try. So she would do it for half the day, but then go out with the others and ignore the eggs. We joked that maybe she was holding out for an eight-hour working day if she was going to brood.

Farewell, Ester. You were a lovely duck, and I shed tears for you.

It is probably obvious from recent posts that I have been indulging in biology nerdery recently! Even before I moved in, I was looking forward to making a species list for my 10 hectares. I have various biotopes on my land: garden, pastureland with oaks, open field with grass, spruce plantation, clearcut, running water and a pond, and a small patch of deciduous forest. The wild trees and bushes I have are: oak, elm, lime, ash, hazel, maple, cherry, wild apple, birch, alder, aspen, rowan, alder buckthorn, bird cherry, red and black elderberry, spruce, and one tiny pine. : D This is obviously good for biodiversity!

I could of course have gotten much further on the list if I had been more active early in the fall, but I had just moved then and was, um, quite busy. But after Christmas, when I was at about 220 species, I thought, well, I'm going to reach 250 species by New Year! Which I did quite easily by focusing on mosses, which are a specialty of mine that I hadn't looked at much here so far. And then I thought, I'm going to get 300 species before my housemate is back from England! Which I have now managed, as he comes home tomorrow. Species number 300 was a roe deer that just wandered past. : D

It became more of a challenge after it snowed, but I managed: yesterday I got seven species by a combination of searching for specific ones I knew ought to be here somewhere, and by getting creative and, for example, seeing what insects might lurk in the cellar underneath the small cabin (answer: the mosquito Culex pipiens). I love digging where I stand, because it means that I also see new species I've never seen before. I mean, otherwise I would never have bothered with that mosquito! Yesterday I also identified two wood-living fungi I'd never seen before.

Here's a breakdown of what I have so far:
vascular plants: 89 (I'm bound to get more in the spring and summer)
mosses: 75 (I wonder how many more there are? perhaps 100-120 in total?)
fungi: 45 (I've barely scratched the surface, I know...)
lichens: 31 (there are so many crust lichens I can't identify!)
invertebrates: 30 (this can grow vastly in the spring/summer, if I only have time!)
birds: 26 (I'll be relying on previously mentioned housemate here; he's a serious birdwatcher)
mammals: 4 (roe deer, fallow deer, red squirrel, and a yellow-necked mouse which we caught in a trap and gave to the cat to eat--I ought also to be able to see wild pig and European hare which are certainly around here)
reptiles and amphibians: 1 (common toad)

Of course, I can also increase biodiversity with my own efforts: I'd like to have a pile of sand for hymenoptera and other insects to make nests in, and make sure to have flowering plants to attract insects, etc.

Americans! (And others, I suppose, but the plants are native to America.) Have you tasted any of the following, and if so, what did you think of the taste?

- Ribes aureum (according to Wikipedia known as golden currant/clove currant/pruterberry/buffalo currant)
- Ribes divaricatum (the variety known as black honey-berry)
- Ribes cynosbati (apparently tastes of violets?)

Also, are these species, which seem to grow wild and be native to North America, subject to a lot of plant breeding such that there are lots of domesticated breeds, as there are with Ribes species native to Europe such as black currant, red currant and gooseberry? I found these American species for sale at German plant nurseries and am now tempted...the first two especially sound interesting.

Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow (2024)
Read for book club. I LOVED this! : D I bounced off The Iron Children, but this book was entirely different. It's fun and fast-paced and with a grabby narrative voice, and it turns out that f/f with two characters who don't really trust each other (until they finally do) is just what I wanted to read. Sol and Ruthi have so much chemistry together, and I also enjoy all the details of Ruthi's high society con job! It's interesting how we're so deep in the POV of the main character, and it really colors the view of the other characters. I would probably get along well with Esteban, we could talk about soil and I wouldn't mind his social awkwardness! And obviously Jules fell in love with him, so he must have something going for him. But Ruthi really dislikes him, which very much colors what we see of him.

Trädgårdsboken om jord by Håkan Wallander et al (2020)
And...a book about soil! : D As it relates to gardening, that is. We're still working on where to grow our vegetables, and my sister who has expertise in this area was here this weekend. We did some tests that were in this book, and determined that probably we should just do it on what has been the arable land in the past. Like, there's probably a reason that there was a vegetable field there before. It's fairly clayey soil, which my sister thinks is at bottom good, but in the short term it's quite compacted and will need work. We're thinking about starting out with various green manure crops with deep roots that might help us improve it. Though potatoes and some other crops can be grown in hay/compost beds on top of the soil, too. Er, sorry, this was not really a review of the book.

It is now a little more than a month until I move into my new place. I keep feeling like something will happen to prevent it, like having miscalculated on the finances of it all or something (but obviously I've worked through them multiple times and also shown them to my mom!). It's such a change in my life that I wonder if it will actually happen??

But on the other hand, things are now much more settled: I have found three housemates who want to live with me, and whom I am excited to live with! ( More about this )