Urban Peasant

Soap

2010-08-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

While cleaning out the linen closet this past week I stumbled upon some old bars of Dove soap. Curious to see what is in it I flipped the box to read the ingredients:

Sodium Lauroyl Isethionate, Stearic Acid, Sodium Tallowate or Sodium Palmitate, Lauric Acid, Sodium Isethionate, Water, Sodium Stearate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Cocoate or Sodium Palm Kernelate, Fragrance, Sodium Chloride, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Titanium Dioxide.

Compare this list to the ingredients of Kirk's Original Coco Castile:

Coconut Soap, Water, Coconut Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Natural Fragrance

2010-03-11T12:59:00.001-08:00

This can of spice i found in my parents cupboard is quite possibly older than me.

2010-03-08T17:37:00.001-08:00

Darning egg! New purchase from Halcyon yarns in Bath, Maine. Apparently, these tough times have caused an uptick in the sales of darning eggs.

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2010-03-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

The three R's

2010-02-10T17:02:00.001-08:00

Jersey City winter

Seedling Season, part 2

2010-01-20T17:15:00.000-08:00

Now that is late January, it is time to start experimenting with starting seedlings. Some of these seedlings will make it into this year's Dyer's Garden (purple basil, madder). Some of these seedlings I am planting to test out my new LED grow light. And some are plants I just want to grow even though I don't quite know where they will end up--need more land!

So what do I have in the dirt?

Anthemis tinctoria (Dyer's Camomile)--don't have a home for that yet. May end up in a pot on the front stoop.

Polyganum tinctorium (Indigo)--I really don't have a home for this. And I'm not quite sure that it would grow well enough in this climate. But how can you resist a plant that bleeds blue?

Hyssopus officianlis (Hyssop)--destined for the front stoop.

Pogostemon heyeanus (Java patchouli)--intended for the front stoop.

Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly weed)--also for the front stoop.

Wizard coleus. No home yet.

Ocimum basilicum (Purple Basil)--into the garden it goes!

Achillea filipendula (Parker's Yarrow)--last year's experiment with Yarrow in the garden didn't fair too well. I don't think it liked the cold wet weather we had. These are reinforcements.

Rudbekia hirta (Black-Eyed Susans)--ditto as with the Yarrow.

Rubia tinctorum (Madder)--one plant survived last year. But I need more if I am going to get multiple skeins of red yarn!

This project is one part gardening and one part recycling. I find that yogurt containers (specifically Siggi's skyr yogurt containers) make great starter pots. And the plastic tubs from overpriced organic, packaged greens and lettuce make great mini-green-houses. Throw in a wooden clementine box and you have your very own indoors garden!

The mini-greenhouses:

Under the purple hue (red and blue lights) of the LED:

2010-01-14T18:58:00.001-08:00

It's January, which means time to start the seedlings for Spring planting. This year I will be doing the Dyer's Garden once again (see earlier posts for more on that) but with some changes. In a subsequent post I will report back on the results of last year's garden. Today, however, a photo of my new LED grow light! If it works as advertised I will now have two seedling stations. But now, time to do some seedling planning. . .

2010-01-03T10:59:00.001-08:00

I used to bake bread much more frequently. A cold, blustery, New Yorker day seemed all the reason to return to the habit. This is a half-white/half-wheat modification of a Laurel's Kitchen recipe.

A Stroll Along the High Line

2009-11-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Ascending to the High Line . . .

amongst shadows and

stained-glass,

industry is

balanced with life.

From Seed to Sheep

2009-11-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

If you have been reading my previous posts about creating and growing a Dyer's garden, below is a photo of the end result. No, not the garden, by hand-dyed wool using plants grown from the garden. From left to right:

Icelandic Wool, undyed
Icelandic Wool, dyed with Black-eyed Susans
Icelandic Wool, dyed with French Brocade marigolds

Aural New York: Think Cafe

2009-11-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Think Cafe, The Bowery
November 8, 2009

2009-08-10T15:59:00.001-07:00

Look at the text not the cookies.

In search of the Rosy Twisted Stalk

2009-05-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

As part of a group of volunteers working with the New York New Jersey Trail Conference, I monitor a site along the Appalachian Trail for rare and threatened plant species. My site is near the New York - New Jersey border and his home to the rosy twisted stalk (streptropus roseus). Each May I go out to monitor the site and count the number of plants. Rosy twisted stalks like to grow at the edge of rivers and does not usually grow as far South as New Jersey--in fact that is why it is listed as threated in NJ as this is the Southern end of its range.

Photos of this year's monitoring:

FWD:

2009-05-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

Naval disgrace

Dyer's Garden - Preparing the Soil

2009-04-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

Today we prepared the soil for the Dyer's Garden. It is a sunny April day, but windy and cold (37F when we woke up this morning). How did our community garden plot look after sitting through a cold, snowy Jersey City winter? Not too bad, actually. The winter rye that we planted last fall had filled out very nicely, covering the garden plot with a thick layer of 8" greenery. I am using winter rye as a green manure and it serves two purposes. First, it takes root and grows in the fall which helps to prevent nutrients from washing away (they are locked up in the rye itself) and prevents the soil from blowing away (because the roots of the winter rye hold it in place). Second, now in early Spring, this plant turns bright green and we dig it in for added fertlizer. Garden with winter rye:

First, we dug in the winter rye with a hoe:

Then, since is only the second year we have had this community garden plot and aren't quite sure of the quality of the soil, we added in a bag of manure, a few bags of Coast of Maine compost (lobster shells!!!!), and a couple cubic fee of peat:

And then it is off to plant. These are cosmos seeds we harvested from last year's garden:

And finally we traced out the lines for the curving stone paths (see earlier post for overall garden design):

In a couple of weeks, once we are safely past the Jersey City frost date, the seedlings are going into the ground.

Dyer's Garden - Seedlings!

2009-03-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much to write regarding the Dyer's Garden, but as we inch closer and closer to Spring things are starting to happen. In our kitchen I have an entire nursery set up to cuttings, seedlings, and other plants--many that will end up in the Dyer's Garden.

I have had to deploy a variety of terrariums (some elegant, some leftover plastic lettuce containers) to protect the seedlings from marauding animals (read 2 orange cats). And the seedlings are coming along nicely. Here they are arranged as they will go into the garden:

From upper left hand corner to right hand corner:

Amaranth (across the top)
Zinnia (far right of the line of amaranth)
Madder (under the amaranth
Black eye susans
dahlias
purple basil (in middle)
Parker's Yarrow (far right near top)
French Brocade Marigolds (middle front)
Marjoram

There are other plants to come along but I am going to sow them directly in the soil. Here is another view of the seedling garden:

A close-up of the Amaranth (they should eventually get to six feet tall!!):

a shot of the madder seedlings (grown from seeds from Fedco Seeds in Maine):

And the best part, the exposed crown of the Madder where you can see the roots starting to turn red. It is the red roots of the madder plant that will eventually be used for dying.

How rich people live.

2009-02-28T16:27:00.000-08:00

Radiator in opera guilds secret lounge.

Too much waste.

2009-02-21T07:25:00.001-08:00

Cape May coffee.

2009-02-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

Whos your edamame?

2009-02-14T11:01:00.001-08:00

Marble cemetary nyc

2009-02-14T10:57:00.000-08:00

Change.

2009-01-19T14:33:00.000-08:00

With all the talk of change perhaps we need to remember that change comes from within. So says the external blogger voice.

Morning light on snow.

2009-01-19T04:37:00.001-08:00

Coffee on the go

2009-01-19T04:19:00.001-08:00

Urban(e) drive through.

Office still life

2009-01-10T12:17:00.001-08:00

Digital green-l.l. bean camping lamp

2009-01-04T16:05:00.000-08:00

I have divided my environmental focus into two ways: digital green and analog green. Here is an example of digital green-a solar reading lamp.

A spot of green on a cold january day

2009-01-04T12:29:00.000-08:00

Urban Garden Design - The Dyer's Garden

2009-01-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

As described in a previous post, I designed a dyer's garden for my final class project for a class taken at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The class focused on garden design for small, urban spaces--from the backyards of brownstone apartment buildings to the triangle shaped leftovers of where roads meet but can't quite consume all the land. My choice for land was a 9' x 6' plot I hold a the Brunwick Community Garden in Jersey City.

[Yes, yes, I know that Jersey City and garden, or for that matter, anything green, alive and growing, might strike one as being an oxymoron (although, this is the garden state and Jersey City even has a division of Parks and Forestry). But even if most people act as if they have forgotten that their cities are embedded in nature, there are many people trying to bring back that relationship.]

The design for my garden plot focused on how to turn a small space in an open, public area into something both functional and beautiful. The function comes in the form of plants that can be used for dyeing wool. The beauty, hopefully, comes through the design.

Coming soon, a walkthough of the design and plants.

Recycling's better when commingled.

2009-01-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

Coffee mill

2008-12-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

Why buy an electric coffee grinder made in china when you can get a hand powered coffee mill made in germany that will last longer and do a better job? This one is a zassenhaus.

Simplicity

2008-12-28T16:50:00.001-08:00

Wine of the day

2008-12-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

Consistently good.

Industrial sunset.

2008-12-27T14:40:00.001-08:00

Elizabeth, new jersey

Urban Garden Design

2008-11-23T15:51:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the topic at hand (Urban Garden Design), please insert requisite mea culpa about not blogging in a long time, I meant to, should have, blah blah blah. And now back to UGD.

This fall I signed up for a course at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and took an excellent course on urban garden design as part of their horticulture certificate. Taught by Nigel Rollings, the main assignment in the class was to learn how to, and then create our own, plan for an urban garden space. For my project I took on turning our small (nine foot by six foot) rectangle of dirt at the Brunswick Street Community Garden into a Dyer's Garden--that is a garden designed around plants that can be used to dye wool. One of my classmates suggested that I document the process of actualizing the design--an idea I like a lot. So with this post I am launching a series of posts that will document the process.

Up next, the design.

The Grasses Control Us

2008-02-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

If you have never watched any TED Talks, now is a good time to start--very interesting, 20minute talks from thinkers and intellectuals gathered in Monterrey, CA. This one happens to be by Michael Pollan. Of course, when he starts talking about corn and its mission of world domination, I couldn't help but think that Plankton (from Sponge Bob Square Pants) has his strategy all wrong. (Actually, Plankton has his strategy right, he just doesn't realize it. Since Plankton is the main ingredient for Crabby Patties, the ecosystem has already evolved to perpetuate the Plankton genepool. The Plankton just isn't self-aware).

Knead More Bread

2008-01-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

There are not many better things than the smell of freshly baking bread wafting from the oven. I cooked a basic loaf of white bread following a recipe from Joy of Cooking. The bread was good but I was left thinking that I should of used the old, stand-by recipe that I have used quite often: from Laurel's kitchen. Perhaps the kitchen was too cold (it was a cold, damp NY day) or perhaps I left the milk too hot, but the Joy of Cooking recipe rose very slowly and I was left with a smaller, dense loaf than I would have like. I was able to rescue the loaf using one of Cooking Illustrated tips of placing the dough in an unheated oven with a pan of just boiled water underneath it (heat and humidity aid in the rising). But by the end of baking I was longing to go back to the Laurel's Kitchen recipe (water, sugar, flour, yeast, salt). Very simple and very good, despite the over-the-top hippie suggestions of baking it in 64 oz juice cans.

Welcome to the Urban Peasant

2008-01-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

The Urban Peasant, for those of you not living in Minneapolis in the late 80s/early 90s, was a coffeehouse on the West Bank near the University of Minnesota campus. A good cafe--one of my favorites actually--unpretentious, open into the wee hours of the night, and where I spend a good deal of my time with my friend Sam and playing Mao (the card game). I wonder if it is still there--although I doubt it. I suspect that little stretch of the West Bank and the 7 Corners has long since been gentrified. But I always did like the name.

The name aptly described a dichotomy I always felt in my life, and a split that is deeply embedded in American culture: between city and country (or even Hamilton versus Jefferson). No matter which side of the "debate" one ended on, the way of life described by the country (or city) was done in such a way as to exclude the other way of life. In recent days this divide has take other forms: environment (nature/ecology/natural) and progress (business/growth/technology). And again, the terms used to describe one side always did so at the exclusion of the other side. But I've always had the nagging feeling that there really was no divide--that the two, no matter how described, were one and the same. This sameness is what I felt Urban Peasant described, or at least alluded to. And it was the sameness, or unity, that I tried to live: green urban; urban peasant; urbane country. What have you.

And thus this blog. This blog is the more practical, descriptive side of I another blog I have long neglected (that blog has a more philosophical bent). This blog is the life of an urban peasant. Let's see what happens.