GARDEN WORKS
by  Emily Cates

Attention garlic lovers, now until the freeze is the time when you should be planting. If you have as much affection for this beloved stinking rose as I do, then you’ll want to read on for some helpful advice including cultivar selection, obtaining planting stock, site preparation, planting, and post-planting care.

First, though, let’s find out which cultivars we like. Garlic is usually divided into groups having stiff stalks (hardnecks) or soft, pliable stalks (softnecks). Within these groups are several subgroups of many named cultivars.

Generally, hardnecks- especially those in the Rocambole group (Spanish Roja, Phillips, Stewart’s)- are valued for their exquisite flavors. Softnecks, on the other hand, (Kettle River Giant, Red Toch) tend to excel in storage and make beautiful braids. In a search to obtain suitable cultivars for our gardens and tastes, look for those with desirable qualities such as cold hardiness, storage abilities, and culinary attributes. In my opinion, the most tried-and-true, beginner-friendly hardnecks that are easiest to grow and obtain planting stock for are the ones called German Extra Hardy, and Music. I would also recommend a softneck, known as Inchelium Red.

Where can we find planting stock? FEDCO and Johnny’s are local companies that carry the aforementioned cultivars. Once you get a garlic patch established, save your own bulbs and keep your own strain going year after year. It’s always a good idea to make sure our planting stock is from the best of the best if possible, and free of disease and mechanical injury. Garlic that was harvested too late will have split bulb wrappers, but should be just fine for planting stock (and possibly more affordable).

Where should we plant our garlic? It’s optimal to give garlic the highest place of honor in the garden: a plot with the very best soil and full sun. Give them the royal treatment! At the end of every September, dig and grub out the weeds in the beds, paying extra attention to extracting as many roots and rhizomes as possible. (I’ve found this to be most effective when done by hand – just think of it as a free gym membership…and good business for your chiropractor…) Then go through with a spading fork and turn the soil, adding compost and/or manure, and amendments such as azomite and clean wood ashes. Now it’s ready to plant!

Next, separate the individual cloves from the bulb and plant each clove about 9 inches apart, pointy-side up with the point an inch or two under soil level. They can be in single rows or staggered in beds. Labels and a map are crucial if more than one named garlic is planted. After planting, cover the planting with a nice, thick mulch of straw. Farm animal bedding works really well, too, especially if it’s from goats. Speaking of animals – if there’s no fence around the garden, it might be a good idea to lay down some welded-wire fencing on top of the mulch. The garlic will grow through this while being protected from scratching, digging, and chomping critters who like garlic as much as we do.

In the meantime, we’re done for now until Springtime. Whew, it was invigorating work – and worth it, too!

by  Peter Cates

 

Dottie West
A Legend in My Time; RCA Camden CAS-2454; 12-inch stereo vinyl LP; released 1971 and consisting of nine selections from 2 previous LPs from 1965 and 1967.

Dottie West (1932-1991) recorded upwards of 28 albums for RCA alone between 1965 and 1975, many with the Jordannaires and the arrangements of Chet Atkins. She had a particular gift for cutting to the agony and ecstasy of a given song, especially when it was the high caliber writing of Don Gibson, Dallas Frazier, Willie Nelson, Mickey Newbury, etc., examples of which are featured here. As stated above, a sampler album but a very enjoyable one.

Copies available from the Amazon site starting at five dollars for the lp and eight for a cd reissue containing both this and her 1965 Sound of Country Music.

Walton
Belshazzar’s Feast; Coronation Te Deum; Sir Georg Solti conducting the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra; Benjamin Luxon, baritone; Ralph Downes, organ; London OS26525, 12-inch vinyl stereo LP, recorded March, 1977.

Sir William Walton (1902-1983) was one of England’s foremost 20th century composers and first achieved fame with Belshaz zar’s Feast at the very young age of 29 in 1931. This oratorio, a term describing a work for choir and orchestra with a Bib­lical subject as its theme, is probably the most scorching, high-spirited and, in its quieter moments, atmospheric, if not creepy example of the genre, light years different from Handel’s Messiah.

The subject draws on the years in Babylonian captivity of the Jews, the evil of Belshazzar the king and the depraved feast that he holds for his court, climaxing in God’s destruction of everyone – there is a passage depicting the hand from out of nowhere scrawling the miraculous writing on the wall – “Mene mene tekel upharsin, thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting !” – just before God’s wrath against these folks is totally vented.

A later, shorter work included on the record is the 1953 Coronation Te Deum, specially composed for the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II. Walton paid numerous visits to Westminster Abbey to check out every possible corner for the best projection of the music. Although not a masterwork, it has a listenable festive majesty .

Solti conducted performances of both works with power, zest and beauty, clarifying and negotiating Belshazzar’s tricky rhythms with suave effect.

CD editions of this recording start at $7.50 on the Amazon site while the LPs begin at $4.89.

Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge, along with Tale of Two Cities, are the only Dickens novels I have read from cover to cover. Having made this statement, I intend no sort of contempt for his formidable storytelling gifts but merely to convey that too many other activities obstruct my intentions to enjoy the several unread volumes on my shelves.

Written in 1841 when Dickens was only 29, its several hundred pages are a depiction of an assembly of good and bad characters in London during the Gordon anti-Catholic riots of 1780. It has engaging sub-plots of compelling interest and a sinister Dennis the Hangman who loves to editorialize on both the meaningful and humorous implications of his work, praising the gallows as a very practical and most civilized tool of true justice.

by Roland D. Hallee

While preparing breakfast last Saturday, I glanced out the kitchen window towards my recently cleaned up garden plot. While looking around I noticed some movement, and commented to my wife: “I think I have a title for a new country song, ‘There’s a squirrel in the compost pile.’”

I’m not sure how that translates to pickup trucks, bass boats and lost loves, but I’m sure it has a place in there somewhere.

Anyway, that prompted me to ask myself what could be in the compost that would interest a squirrel. After all, it has nothing more than plant stems, vines from squashes and various roots and stalks.

There were a few tiny, fledgling fruits from these items that didn’t have a chance to mature, but that would be it.

Then my mind rewound to the recently closed down camp, and the food sources out there. Nearby there is a large oak tree and a mature, but fairly young beech tree. Most of you have probably heard acorns when they fall from the trees, and land on something substantive. They sound like gunfire, exploding bombs or branches falling. They make quite a loud noise. The presence of Beech nuts, on the other hand, are hardly even noticeable.

Wildlife that consume acorns as an important part of their diets includes birds, such as jays, pigeons, some ducks and several species of woodpeckers. Small mammals include mice, squirrels and several other rodents – ahh, squirrels. Large mammals include pigs, bears, and deer. Acorns are in high demand.

Acorns are attractive to animals because they are large and efficiently consumed or cached. They are rich in nutrients and contain large amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fats, as well as calcium, phosphorus and potassium, and the vitamin niacin.

Acorns are too heavy for wind dispersal, so the spreading of the seed is dependent on animals like the squirrels who cache the nuts for future use. Squirrels scatter-hoard the acorns in a variety of locations in which it is possible for them to germinate and thrive. On occasion, the odd acorn may be lost, or the squirrel may die before consuming all the acorns it has stored. A small number of acorns may germinate and survive, producing the next generation of oak trees.

As far as us humans go, acorns have frequently been used as a coffee substitute. The Confederates in the American Civil War and the Germans during World War II, which were cut off from coffee supplies by Union and Allied blockades respectively, are particularly notable past instances of this use of acorns.

As far as the beech nuts go, again going back to camp and the beech tree near our site, there doesn’t seem to be much activity by squirrels in the area of the tree. Of course, the beech nut seems to defy gravity. It is a small nut with soft-spined husks. Although it is high in tannin content, they are bitter. The nut can be extracted by peeling back the husk, but your fingers may hurt dealing with the spines.

Maybe that is why they are not that attractive to squirrels.

Nowhere in all my research did I find any reference to wildlife that feast on the beech nut.

Beech trees are better known for other things than producing a source of food. The Beech bark is extremely thin and scars easily. Carvings, such as lovers’ initials, remain because the beech tree is unable to heal itself.

On a different note, slats of Beech wood are washed in a caustic soda to leach out any flavor and is used in the bottom of fermentation tanks for Budweiser beer. This allows a surface for the yeast to settle, so that it doesn’t pile up too deep. Beech is also used to smoke Westphalian ham, various sausages and some cheeses.

The American beech tree occurs only in the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. It is believed that it was found coast to coast prior to the Ice Age. Now they can only be found east of the Great Plains. You will rarely find the beech tree in developed areas unless it is a left over of a forest that was cut for land development.

The beech tree is also temperamental. Some trees never produce nuts while others only spawn edible nuts in certain years.

So what was that squirrel – I could not discern whether it was Martha or Stewart, my two resident rodents – looking for that day? Probably just window shopping.

by  Peter Cates

John Stewart
Blondes

Allegiance Records AV 431, 12-inch stereo vinyl LP, recorded 1982.

John Stewart (1939-2008) was arguably one of the dozen or so finest singer/songwriters to emerge during the folk/rock era of the ‘60s. When he was picked by the Kingston Trio to replace original member Dave Guard in 1961, his singing, composing, instrumentals and comic spokesman skills added much to the live concerts and recordings for the Trio’s remaining six years before disbanding in 1968.

The launch of his solo career with 1968’s Signals through the Glass would turn out to be, because of its over-produced arrangements (although I still treasure it), a mere taste of the brilliance manifested later in California Bloodlines, Willard, Sunstorm and others over the next 40 years. His songs were stories of the American experience wrought with a uniquely original musical voice- folk, country, Aaron Copland, blues, pop and disco, all blended into the most engaging, individualistic goulash to be heard anywhere. Whether a Mississippi back road, the spectacular dark prairie skies of Nebraska or wistful memories of the woman who got away, Stewart internalized these experiences and transformed them into something very special.

1982’s Blondes is an assortment of 10 songs of exceptional quality, a standard that Stewart, for all his gifts, didn’t always sustain. The general theme is the stark, glittering reality of the early ‘80s California urban landscape, saturated with the refuse of pipe dreams, lonely hearts thousands of miles from home and other on-going forms of emotional brokenness. A few titles reveal a lot – Girl Down the River, Angeles (The City of the Angels), Queen of Hollywood High, Golden Gate; my favorite, by a tiny margin, is You Won’t Be Going Home, a piercingly eloquent four minutes of music that ranks with anything I have heard from any genre.

As so often the case, Stewart has the finest vocal/instrumental talent money can buy. Here, Lindsay Buckingham and Linda Ronstadt do a couple of backups.

Through Amazon and its vendors, Blondes is available for $9 as an mp3, 15 dollars as an LP, and 19 bucks as a CD .

Pergolesi

Stabat Mater; Teresa Stitch-Randall, soprano; Elizabeth Hoengen, alto; Anton Heiller, organ; Mario Rossi conducting the Vienna Akademiekammerchor and Vienna State Opera Orchestra; Vanguard SRV-195SD, 12-inch stereo vinyl LP, recorded mid-’50s.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, 1710-1736, earned a precarious living composing for the Italian nobility before dying at 26 from tuberculosis. Being one of his two best known works along with the opera La Serva Padrona, these would not be heard until after the composer’s death. Stabat was commissioned by a few nobles for performance before a private gathering and had no liturgical purpose. But it has a lovely intimate, devotional quality and is sung very well by the two fine soloists and women’s choir under Rossi’s authoritative leadership.

Copies of the LP and CD start at just over $2.

The Time of Your Life

starring James Cagney, William Bendix, Ward Bond, Broderick Crawford, Tom Powers, Wayne Morris, Jeanne Cagney, James Barton, etc.; directed by H.C. Potter; produced by William Cagney; released by United Artists; 1948; 109 minutes; based on a play by William Saroyan.

This all time favorite of mine, and very underrated, deals with folks who frequent a San Francisco waterfront bar, just “being themselves!” It features some of Hollywood’s finest alpha male actors – Cagney, Morris, Bond, Crawford, etc. Special fun – just don’t bring any preconceptions !