Deer-free.

Lewisburg.

For those who've missed it, it's full-blown gardening season. Around here, at any rate. Gardening + work + bare minimum of effort required to keep dog sane and house from burning down = long days. But it all starts to feel fine once the harvesting begins. We've had a few odds and ends already - hop shoots, which are a bit like asparagus; dandelion and chicory greens; some rhubarb¹ - but we're starting to get strawberries:



Behind them are the radishes and turnips in the deck-protected planters:



They're tiny, but quick to grow. The downside of planters is that the soil in them is more subject to surrounding air temperature, so seeds here will germinate later than those directly in the earth. The upside, of course, is the ease of harvest and rather effective critter-proofing. If by next year I'm able to construct a set of cold frames, I'll actually be able to put out extra-early plantings of cold-tolerant vegetables to enjoy before the main crops kick off.

That said, I doubt anything can beat the hops out of the gate.



I noticed shoots emerging at the very start of April. Within a week, I'd managed to cobble together a support structure that now, six weeks later, isn't big enough to accommodate the most vigorous bines. Honestly, though, I was rather busy with the rest of the garden. After all, it's all now in here:



Though the wire mesh guard at the bottom isn't entirely finished - there's evidence of rabbits getting in and nibbling a bit - and we have yet to stain it², it's essentially complete. Fifty feet square, four and a half feet tall with deer-deterring cables three feet higher, enclosing eight distinct garden plots (each thirteen feet square) and a central picnic space. Seven of eight plots are currently tilled, with the last half-complete.³ This year's seedlings, beneath fluorescent lights in the basement, are doing better than they ever have before, looking in perfect shape to give us plenty to eat, despite this year's smaller garden.

And look:



Peas safe from deer browsing. So worth it.

* * * * *

¹Which, as this morning's breakfast can attest, makes for some fine scones. Chop into ¼-inch lengths, toss with sugar, and keep 'em raw. They hold their shape during cooking, but soften up nicely, with their sour flavor intact.

²Enough free time plus two days of rain-free, warm weather seems too much to ask for at the moment.

³In order to keep my head from exploding - it's best, when tackling a major project like a large fence, to maximize its enclosed area and minimize its bill of materials; square is both simple and efficient to construct - the garden is in a new location. So all that ground tilled before? Unused. (Bound for next year's orchard.) Our rototiller? Broken halfway through. Our neighbor's rototiller? Semi-functional, with frustrating carburetor trouble. So it's down to tiller number three to get the job done. Backs and shoulders, for those wondering, are rather sore these days.

Pictures from halfway around the world.

Lewisburg.

Sharon and I spent most of January in southeast Asia. It's a grand sort of a place for a vacation, especially if you consider that there were endless options for exploration. Some appealed greatly - and others not at all¹ - and while there might not be something for absolutely everyone, anyone who has the inkling of an idea that they'd like to see the region will be able to make it a worthwhile trip.

And the opportunities for photographs... oh my.

So here are a bundle, with minimal commentary. I'm not quite sure how else to do this.²

That Luang

Vientiane, Lao PDR
That Luang, the Golden Stupa, the major symbol of Laos. The top alone is covered in - quite literally - half a ton of gold leaf.

The Buddha and the Phayanyak

Vientiane, Lao PDR
The Phayanyak, the seven-headed king of the nagas and both benevolent and vengeful spirit of the river and of water, protects the Buddha from the rain and floods as he meditates.

That Dam

Vientiane, Lao PDR
That Dam, the Black Stupa. Once covered in gold, now black after foreign armies plundered Vientiane.

Naga at Wat Si Saket

Vientiane, Lao PDR
The mighty naga, river spirit. Laos, a country deeply connected to the Mekong River, adores these spirits unlike anywhere else.

Buddhas at Wat Si Saket

Vientiane, Lao PDR
The only major wat to survive the last sacking of Vientiane, Wat Si Saket is as worn as one would expect from more than 150 years of use. And it is ever so beautiful for it.

Flowers for Fa Ngum

Vientiane, Lao PDR
Fa Ngum, founder of the kingdom of Lan Xang, of the Million Elephants, still receives offerings, some six hundred years after his death. Take that, whoever happened to be ruling bits of Europe in the 14th century.

Haw Phra Kaeo

Vientiane, Lao PDR
The Phra Kaeo, the Emerald Buddha, hasn't been here since being taken to Siam as a prize more than two centuries ago. Memories here, it seems, are long.

Buddha at Haw Phra Kaeo

Vientiane, Lao PDR
"Calling the Earth to Witness" pose.

Talaat Khua Din

Vientiane, Lao PDR
Sticky rice baskets. The price is what you're willing to pay.

Plumeria

Vientiane, Lao PDR
Plumeria flowers. Naturalized, not native, but the national flower nonetheless.

Karst

North of Vang Vieng, Lao PDR
Karst formations as seen from the road. Stunning, but difficult to climb, both on foot and by bus.

Mekong River

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
The mighty Mekong. Massive, powerful, and deceptively calm.

Stencil work at Wat Xieng Thong

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
Intricate, elegant, and just one of the many impressive works of art in Luang Prabang's Wat Xieng Thong.

Buddhas at Wat Xieng Thong

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
Statues of the Buddha, beside the funeral cart of the last Lao king. The last one to get a funeral, anyhow.

Phou Si

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
Most folks, given a strategic location with a steep hill alongside a major river and a significant tributary, would built a fortress. Instead, there's a charming wat here.

Lao chillis at Talaat Phou Si

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
Lao food, generally speaking, isn't spicy. They make up for it by eating these little firebombs directly, like a throat-catching palate cleanser.

Ridgeline view

Near Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
It's a long climb up here. That's the Mekong in the distance, far down in the valley.

Lotus flowers

Ban Long Lao Kao, Lao PDR
Still, stagnant, ugly water; clean, beautiful flowers. It's no wonder the lotus is such a powerful symbol for Buddhist enlightenment.

Tad Kuang Si

Near Luang Prabang, Lao PDR
A mighty waterfall, in the midst of the Lao jungle, surrounded by calm, turquoise blue pools.

Sala Kaew Koo

Nong Khai, Thailand
The jaws of life, the entrance to the Wheel of Life at the Sala Kaew Koo sculpture park. It is, in fact, even crazier in person.

Wat Pho

Bangkok, Thailand
Large, brightly colored, even flashy. But somehow, Wat Pho doesn't seem terribly busy, at least not by Bangkok standards.

Animal statues at Wat Pho

Bangkok, Thailand
I'm guessing that they're stylized lions.

Chedis at Wat Pho

Bangkok, Thailand
Massive, covered in brightly colored ceramic mosaics, and restored every half-century or so.

Buddhas at Wat Pho

Bangkok, Thailand
Serene, secluded, and a fine place for relaxing or meditating on one's own in the very center of Bangkok.

Grand Palace

Bangkok, Thailand
Grand, indeed. Photographs can't begin to capture the overwhelming experience that is a visit to Bangkok's Grand Palace. And that's not counting the hordes of tourists and devout Thais all angling to get a look at the Emerald Buddha.

* * * * *

¹One of our favorite games during the trip was "Which Family Member Would Hate This Most?" Try it yourself sometime!

²This is, of course, a tiny subset of the whole mess of photos - and just of mine. Combined with Sharon's, edited, trimmed, and all that to fit onto a single CD, it's about 300 photos. This selection is halfway to random, because developing an actual narrative would veer a lot closer to 300 than 25.

2010's garden starts soon.

Lewisburg.

Sharon and I have just recently returned from three weeks of winter-free vacation in Thailand and Laos. Pictures, of course, will be forthcoming, once the hellish task of sorting through them is done.

In the meantime, though, it's also been high season for planning 2010's garden. Things are a bit different this year, in no small part because I've built¹ a fence to keep the critters out. This means that I have a smaller area to work with - time, effort, and money limited the overall fence size - but that I'll spend far less energy repairing damage to deer netting.

Since I knew I'd be gone for much of January, I made a serious effort to finish the planning before leaving, so that I could order my seeds before the more interesting varieties were out of stock.² Most of them have arrived now, and it's genuinely exciting to know that I'll be able to turn those little packets into an enormous quantity of food.

And/or pretty flowers.

Last week- not that I noticed until this morning - the New York Times asked a bunch of gardeners what had them looking forward to 2010. Here's what I'm thinking about:

SEEDS OF SUCCESS
Blauwschokkers Pea. Seed Savers lists it as the "Blue Podded Shelling Pea", but I happen to like the Dutch name. Tall, productive, and both ornamental and delicious. The blue-purple pods and purple-and-white flowers are striking, and the intense color makes them a snap to harvest. I've saved seed from last year, but not enough to account for the extra space I'm allotting it in the new garden. After all, none of it stuck around long enough to be frozen last year.

Chervena Chushka Pepper. Bell peppers have fallen from favor around here. (Except the miniature reds. They're sweet, flavorful, early, and productive.) It's such a rare occasion to get one to ripen without soft spots, or worse, and they take forever. But the sweet, tapered eastern European types? So much less hassle, but with all the sweetness and flavor. They were even a grand success in 2009's abysmal pepper season.

Hakurei Turnip. A hybrid, which means I'll be purchasing new seed every year, but oh so worth it. Sweet, white salad turnips, like radishes without the bite and with better-tasting greens. Most end up a raw nibble around here, though they take well to a bit of stir-frying or gentle braising, too.

German Butterball Potato. As long as I can get good seed potatoes, these will always have a place in the garden. Fine potato flavor, with a texture that's about the middle on the waxy-to-floury spectrum. Well-watered, they produce plenty of large, russeted spuds that keep well even in my crummy faux root cellar. In fact, I think I might have to roast up some for dinner tonight.

Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. Another surprise success in 2009. I didn't watch closely enough, and let two of the good-looking fruits turn soft and unpleasant against the sodden ground, but the other two I brought inside were big, meaty, and delicious. The flesh is fibrous, which means it's not the best all-purpose winter squash, but roasted until tender and pureed in the food processor, it makes wonderful pumpkin pies, soups, gnocchi, and more. We keep pre-measured bags frozen and ready to go for winter warmers.

True Red Cranberry Bean. This fellow had a place in our very first garden, and most since. Prolific pole beans with fine flavor, they're our go-to standard for winter chilis, especially with those many jars of homegrown canned tomatoes slowly disappearing from the basement shelves. The trick this year was to set aside enough for replanting before they disappeared into the pot. (Especially since they're not available from Seed Savers this year.)

THE NEW GUY
Ziar Breadseed Poppy. Poppies for poppyseeds? Sweet! This variety, according to the Fedco folks, has been bred to eliminate the vents that the plants usually use to disperse their seed, making the seeds a snap to harvest. Plus, the pink and pale red flowers ought to look sharp out there.

NEVER AGAIN
Cauliflower. It's a favorite vegetable of mine - especially roasted - but maddening in the garden. Hungry for rich soil, jealous about its space, and often steadfastly refusing to head up, it's just a nightmare. (I've had better luck with watermelon, another headache for so many gardeners.) Broccoli's not as aggravating, but I'm forgoing the both of them in favor of broccoli raab, which is so much more rewarding.

SHOPPING BAG
To keep my head from exploding - and my seed shipping costs from eclipsing actual seed costs - I limit myself to just a few seed vendors. Our vegetables and flowers come mostly from Seed Savers Exchange (heirlooms, with plenty of fascinating finds), Johnny's Selected Seeds (they're geared more to small-to-medium-sized organic farms, but I've a lot of success with their varieties), and Fedco Seeds (who are, by far, the least expensive, and carry a great deal of unusual and heirloom seeds). We also pick up some flowers from Jung Seed, which has also been a source for strawberries and fruit trees in the past.

* * * * *

¹Well, mostly. It's cold out there, and the last few details will have to wait until the ground thaws before I can tackle them. Still, Sharon and I were out there for hours, in sub-freezing temperatures, attaching vertical slats with a pneumatic nail gun. Now there's a task that makes you feel like you've earned the hot chocolate when you get back inside.

²Currently, they're all the ones on backorder.

Wintry foods.

Lewisburg.

Winter. With the ice and snow and finger-numbing temperatures, it hardly seems the ideal time for bringing delicious foods in from the garden. There are a few late-season pleasures to be had, however. We had frost-sweetened Brussels sprouts around¹ Thanksgiving, and harvested some lovely cabbages from beneath two inches of ice and snow.

Braised with butter, chicken stock, and caraway seeds, they're excellent.

Last weekend, we even took the opportunity to dig carrots and parsnips before the ground turned too cold to work. Here you can see the haul - with parsnips beneath - and a fascinated dog.



The remaining parsnips will overwinter outdoors, to be dug come spring. With a little luck.

I didn't have the best year for mushroom hunting, especially since we didn't get the flush of field mushrooms that appeared in 2008. With too much work to do, escaping to the woods just hasn't been in the cards. Trips to the dog park do happen with some regularity, and it was there that I stumbled across these:



Winter mushrooms, Flammulina velutipes, are around these days. There isn't much to them, with their mild flavor and somewhat slippery texture, but free, wild, edible fungus is still exciting.

* * * * *

¹Not for. Thanksgiving, after all, is a holiday for the same old boring foods a family has every year. Is it possible to make a holiday that embraces food so lackluster in the dinner department? Yes. Yes it is.

Disturbing. Depressing. And The Big Lebowski.

Lewisburg.

I've come to an interesting realization of late: I tend to use pop culture as sort of mood reinforcement. I find this odd, for a simple reason. If I'm feeling low, wouldn't it be best to watch something like The Big Lebowski?

So Sharon's been out of town for most of the last two months, the sole break being about six days back to visit and go to a conference.¹ As one might imagine, this is not conducive to good times. I do, however, make all decisions regarding pop culture consumption solely to suit my own interests. My selection of Netflix films for September and October are an odd reflection of things I might not choose to watch with anyone else.

Some of them I have no plans to watch a second time, regards of their quality or impact.²

It does make me think. In particular, about the highly depressing and disturbing things I've been interested in, and how they aren't necessarily making me feel worse. At times, it's quite the opposite - though this is a delayed effect, I find.

I've started compiling a mental list of those unusual bits of entertainment that are both brilliant - well made, formally beautiful, just truly powerful - and shocking and affecting in their subject matter. It's far from complete, but it is, I think, a list of entertainments well worth the time.

I started to think about this after renting and watching Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom. I watched it because I wanted to have seen it, which meant that I would have to see it.³ Matthew Dessem called it "visceral" and meant it. It didn't make me vomit, as I was concerned it might, but simply watching it was an exhausting experience. It made me realize that there were other films that bothered me more, or at least very specific scenes and moments, but there is little that can match Salò in it relentless pummeling of atrocities.

Shortly before watching Salò, I watched Clean, Shaven, which was depressing overall, with simple moments that truly bothered me. That scene in Inglourious Basterds where B.J. Novak's character is scalping a dead Nazi? Hilarious. The scene in this film where the schizophrenic protagonist - from whose head the film seems to spring - shaves in front a mirror he's covered in paper, because he can't handle reflections? Horrific, and I've cut myself shaving so many times it hardly even registers. Even worse is when the sounds in his head become so bad that he's compelled to remove the transmitters he believes were implanted in him. I squirmed on the couch. It was hard to keep focused on the screen.

If you were to tell me that Clean, Shaven is the most accurate portrait of what it's like to be schizophrenic out there, I'll believe it. If there's something even moreso, I'm not sure I can handle it.

There are more conventional films about mental breakdowns, like Insomnia. I watched it the other night. It was pretty much as I remembered. It does make for an interesting comparison to the American remake, directed by Christopher Nolan, especially when you consider the points raised in the Criterion Contraption essay. (Scroll to the bottom for those, specifically.) Those differences between the characters played by Skarsgård and Pacino sum up everything that's gut-wrenching about the original.

If you're looking for gut-wrenching, though, it might be impossible to outdo Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.⁴ It's a documentary, and every painful detail is easily accessible with a brief Google search. The general consensus is that you should go into the film with as little background as possible, to let it sweep you along. Maybe. It's hard to say, because it's firmly in the category of things that can't be unexperienced, and I only know how I saw it.

I started to get choked up in the first minute or two of the film, I think. I don't precisely recall the time, though I do know the moment, the first voice that begins to break. (The man with his young son. It's in the trailer. It's seared into my brain.) Though I've no doubt there's someone out there who won't cry at this film, I - like damn near everyone who's seen it - spent the bulk of its running time with tears in my eyes. Crushing. Harrowing. Touching. Powerful. Raw. Pick your adjective.

There are a variety of summaries out there, all dancing about the details to keep some of the surprise. My version: Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne's best friend, Andrew Bagby, is murdered by an ex-girlfriend, who it turns out is pregnant with his son. Kuenne interviews family, friends, coworkers, and anyone he can find to paint a portrait of a father for a son who'll never meet him. If this were fiction, it would be an astounding picture of the interconnectedness of people around a single person. But it's a true story, and one with surprises that would be pushing the limits of one's suspension of disbelief if it weren't.

Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes is utterly true, raw, and composed of shocking subject matter - autopsy footage - but it's nothing like Dear Zachary. In a way, because of its formal beauty, it's kind of lovely. The emotions it drums up are complex and sometimes at odds, but I actually enjoy it enough to watch it from time to time. There's a strange comfort in it that I can't quite get my head around. It soothes for reasons unknown.

So does Bonnie "Prince" Billy's album, I See a Darkness. (Title track especially. Album version here; powerful Johnny Cash version here.) It's not unlike listening to the Eels album Electro-Shock Blues, particularly Dead of Winter. Or most anything by Arab Strap.

But films tend to strike me more powerfully. Perhaps because they're just a more immersive experience. Sometimes there are scenes that are just a punch in the gut.

The one that always comes back to me is from Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. This bothered me three years ago, when I wrote:

"The Battle of Algiers looks almost like a documentary, which is why the vicious scenes of torture - brief, not bloody, but looking entirely real - turn my stomach. Even more so is the scene, just before the torture, where FLN bombs explode in the bleachers at the horse races, a place filled with wealthy French spectators. An enraged mob converges on a small Algerian boy selling concessions, beating him unconscious until the police lift him out. You don't see any of the explicit violence, as it's hidden by the bodies of the mob, but the scene is so stark and brutal that I find it extremely difficult to watch."

Great film. Stomach-churning moment.

There's the moment in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence where Viggo Mortenson's character, Tom Stall, smashes in a thug's face with a glass coffee carafe. And we see the bloody aftermath. Or when Mortenson's character, Nikolai, in Cronenberg's Eastern Promises cuts the fingertips off a murdered man in the process of making the corpse unidentifiable. In fact, Cronenberg's films are a treasure trove for this sort of thing. The scenes of Videodrome in Videodrome. Beverly unveiling his new surgical tools in Dead Ringers. Oh, pretty much all of Crash.

Michael Haneke specializes in this sort of thing. The scene I think of most - though it's just one moment of many - is in Time of the Wolf, when Ben is standing before the bonfire. You can see a snippet of it in the trailer, but it's in context, at the end of the film, that it becomes something that sucks the air from your lungs.

See also: when Frank murders a small boy who hears his name in Once Upon a Time in the West. The abandoned war dead on the beach in The Burmese Harp. The aggregate of moments of Caden losing Olive in Synecdoche, New York. The old shirt, after Jack's murder, in Brokeback Mountain. The story of the mulberry trees in Taste of Cherry.

Antoine Doinel, sitting in the classroom as we see his parents, his teacher, and the principal outside, through the glass, in The 400 Blows. Which isn't as rough as the rest, but Truffaut certainly knew how to play a scene for emotional impact.

And Terry Gilliam knows how to monkey with emotions, too, though he so carefully lightens the moment when it's needed. When selecting an actor to play a government torturer, he picks Michael Palin, who's pretty much the nicest man imaginable. He's almost as charming as William Powell playing Nick Charles in The Thin Man, only not fictional. Johnny Depp plays Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because there's no way you can't like the man, and it's essential that we love him.⁵ (Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, anyone?)

He chose Jeff Bridges as the overdosing junkie dad in Tideland, because any role where Jeff Bridges plays a long-in-the-tooth hippie type instantly conjures up thoughts of the Dude. And you can't not like the Dude. (Gilliam readily admits as much.)

And I'm back to The Big Lebowski. I think I'm in a mood to watch it now.

* * * * *

¹And I spent 90% of that time down with H1N-fun.

²Often because of that impact. Of course.

³Mark Twain once remarked something about classics being books that everyone wanted to have read, but no one wanted to read. For years, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare has been sitting on my bookshelf. I doubt that I will ever read it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to get rid of it, or relegate it to a box in the basement.

⁴Here's the trailer, albeit in crummy YouTube quality. (The website's got it smaller, but in higher quality.) I find it very difficult to watch now, having seen the film, though it's hard to say what its impact was before I knew all of the details.

⁵See also: Bill Murray in Where the Buffalo Roam. Or, for late-period Murray, in the films of Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch.

Snow? Seriously?

Lewisburg.

It's snowing here today. Mid-October. As of mere moments ago:



And we just had our first frost - light enough to spare at least half of the zinnias, even - yesterday morning. Bizarre.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so irritating if I had fewer posts to set on the fence you can see in the background.