A Year Outdoors

Cape Gooseberries

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-03-22 19.08.56 smCape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) are not something you’re likely to find in the grocery store. The plant is native to Peru and Chile, and has been introduced into most temperate and tropical climates around the world as a fruit for home gardens. It has been only sporadically commercially grown, however.

The fruit’s flavour defies categorisation. It is like a sour grape crossed with a tomato—not entirely surprising, as it is related to tomatoes. The initial sensation is the sour, and then they leave a lingering fruity tomato flavour in the mouth.

Cape gooseberries grow reasonably well here—some years they grow too well, actually. I’m still learning how to use them and how to enjoy their odd flavour. This year we got only a handful, as I wasn’t able to water them as much as they needed in this hot, dry summer.

Their tartness goes well in jams, chutneys, pies, and fruit salads. They’re also good eaten right in the garden—the papery husk acts as a handle, so you can snack on them even with hands dirty from gardening!

In temperate climates they are an annual, though here they often overwinter, if the weather is mild. In tropical climates they are perennial.

They’re definitely a plant to try, if you’ve never grown them.

The Dark Side

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
Near-full moon means bright evenings, but dark mornings.

Near-full moon means bright evenings, but dark mornings.

Today we tip to the dark side. Tomorrow, night will outstrip day for the first time in six months.

It seems the equinox should be momentous. Autumn should sweep in, chilly and dark, leaving summer behind.

But yesterday, the temperature reached 33 degrees (91F). Today is on track to be even warmer, and tomorrow, the same. Though darkness creeps up on us, the sun has not abandoned us yet.

Still, it is time to remember to appreciate the dark.

This morning, I milked and fed the animals in the dark, as I’ve done for the past month. But before I went back inside and turned on the lights, I paused to appreciate the night sky. The milky way slashed from northern to southern horizon, southern cross glinting in its midst. Pavo, Scorpius, and Lupus were there too—a veritable menagerie of constellations, though truth be told, I can identify only a handful of them without a star chart.

But in the still of early morning, it didn’t matter whether I could find the peacock’s tail in the sky. It was enough to look up and appreciate the vast universe, accessible to us only in the dark.

Great Deals

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
2016-03-20 15.33.57 sm

Sack of daffodil bulbs awaiting planting.

Some people can’t resist a deal.

“Wow, I got two dozen colour-coded, LED-lighted, Wi-Fi enabled sock hangars for the price of twelve!”

I am usually not one of these people.

I’ve even refused a free pair of shoes during a 2 for 1 sale—I only needed one pair, and the idea of finding another pair that fit was too stressful for me.

But when one of the local daffodil growers decided to downsize and sell off bulbs at $45 for 200, I couldn’t help myself. We wanted more daffodils anyway.

Though maybe not 200.

Two hundred daffodil bulbs is actually somewhat intimidating.

Particularly since the garden areas already designated for bulbs are full.

Well, at least they’re not colour-coded, LED-lighted, Wi-Fi enabled sock hangars.

Doing Nothing

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-03-19 18.36.29 HDR smMy husband says I don’t spend enough time doing nothing.

He’s probably right—I rarely sit down, and even when I do, I like to keep my hands busy.

But if there was ever an afternoon made for doing nothing, today was it.

It was hot and windy, and the shady front porch offered a cool and calm refuge after a day canning applesauce.

And so I sat.

I chatted with my husband.

I enjoyed a cold beer.

I watched the wind bend the trees in the front yard, and idly noted that the herb garden looked much better for the rain on Thursday.

For nearly twenty minutes, I did nothing.

I reckon that’s not bad, for a novice. With practice and training, someday I might make it to an hour or more!

Ant Swarm

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-03-18 12.59.05 smI walked out the brick path to my office after lunch today, my mind focused on how I was going to write my main character out of the mess I’d written her into in the morning.

Then something in my peripheral vision made me leap over a few bricks. I turned to inspect what I’d thought I’d seen.

Sure enough, there were three growing ant swarms on the path. And as I expected, when I looked more closely at them, I found winged ants among them.

Among the eusocial ants, only the reproductive individuals have wings. Throughout most of the year, the colony produces wingless worker ants—females who don’t ever reproduce, but instead care for their younger sisters, and feed and defend the colony. In late summer, in response to some environmental signal (often rain), all the colonies in an area simultaneously produce winged ants—both males and females.

Entomology textbooks dryly say the winged ants fly off in search of mates, but from my perspective, having watched winged ants emerge for over 45 years now, the colony throws a huge party for the winged ants before they go.

On “Emergence Day”, an ant nest swarms with activity—not just inside, where it’s always busy—but also out on the surface. Winged and wingless ants pour out of the nest and mingle in the sunshine, sometimes for hours before the winged ants finally take flight. I like to think they’re having a little bachelor/bachelorette party for the potential brides and grooms.

When the winged ants take off, the wingless ones retreat to the nest. Their brothers and sisters will never return. If they are lucky, they’ll find a mate. The males, once they’ve mated, won’t live long. Their job is done, and they are easy prey for birds, spiders, and other predators.

The mated females, if they escape predators themselves, will fly to a favourable nest spot, break off their own wings (they’re not needed anymore), and begin to dig. The small nest each excavates will be home to her first offspring, who will enlarge the nest and care for the next batch of eggs the new queen lays.

A queen ant will mate only once. From this mating, she will parcel out sperm for her entire life (up to 30 years for some species!) to fertilize the eggs she lays.

So the ant swarms you see on the sidewalk are serious business. Step carefully, please!

 

Throwback Thursday—visiting friends, Panama style

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
Paul and me, hamming it up for the camera on our trek.

Paul and me, hamming it up for the camera on our trek.

In Peace Corps in Panama, we lived in a village that was on the edge of what was accessible by vehicle. The lower part of our village was reliably accessible, but the upper part, where we lived, was only accessible in the dry season, and even then it was rough.

Walking was the main mode of travel there.

We walked everywhere. To all the farmers we worked with, to all the forestry groups we worked with. To the tienda, to the bus stop. Up and down (because there was no flat land in our village, or anywhere nearby, for that matter). We grew what we called “campo calves”—massive calf muscles that would have made an Elizabethan swoon.

Walking was such a natural mode of transport, that when we decided to visit a friend, Gareth, who lived on the other side of the mountains (hills, really, the continental divide is very low in Panama), we decided to walk.

First stop was our friend, Paul’s house, an hour up the mountain from our place. Paul went with us. Paul, Gareth, my husband, and I regularly met up for late-night Dungeons and Dragons sessions—a modified version that used only the two ordinary dice we had with us. This was to be an epic journey to play D&D.

After picking up Paul, we climbed further, to El Valle, where we spent the night with one of Paul’s friends there. We found ourselves without breakfast in the morning, so we shouldered our packs and set off with nothing but a cup of coffee in our stomachs.

Not to worry, we soon came across a campesino willing to sell us some bananas, and we ate as we walked.

We had only a vague notion of how to get where we were going, but all paths lead somewhere in the Panamanian countryside, and with regular stops along the way to ask directions, we managed a good pace.

Along the way we talked and laughed, we met campesinos, we enjoyed beautiful views. When we finally trudged into Gareth’s yard late in the afternoon, we felt we’d seen the world.

I have visited many friends since then, but that trip stands out as the best journey ever.

Fruit overload

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-03-15 19.20.44 smCan you have too much fruit? I’m not certain, but if you can, I think we’re approaching it.

I mentioned the apples the other day—there’s still a 20 litre bucket and a large bowl full of them in the kitchen. Then there are the melons I mentioned yesterday—a great heaping platter of them, and more to come in the next few days.

And a houseguest brought us a box of apricots as a gift.

And the grapes have started coming in, so there’s a colander full of them in the kitchen.

And today I went to pick up 200 daffodil bulbs I ordered, and it turns out that the woman selling the bulbs was the first person I ever sold goat kids to—she’s still got one of them. Anyway, so we got to talking (as you do), and next thing I know, she’s filling a bag with peaches for me—dead ripe and luscious.

So sitting in the kitchen right now are probably 10 kilos of fruit for every person in the family.

So I wonder, can you have too much fruit?

 

Melon time

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

2016-03-14 17.47.43 smThey only just squeak into summer here, screaming in at the last minute, if they come at all.

Melons usually hate Canterbury summers—cool and dry just isn’t melon weather. I plant them every year anyway, because sometimes they manage.

This year has been a good year for melons. They would have liked more water, but they at least had the heat they wanted. Most of the melons are grapefruit-sized, but they’re delicious, and because they’re so small, they make fabulous lunchbox fruits—cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, then put the halves back together with a rubber band, and they travel beautifully.

And though they come in only after summer is officially over, they are still the ultimate flavour of summer.

Psocopterans

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I dedicated my book, A Glint of Exoskeleton to the Psocopterans—the booklice. Cute little creatures. They like books–they eat the moulds that grow on them–but they’re not luddites; there’s a whole crew of them that lives in my keyboard. Here is a silly little verse about them.

Psocoptera

Psocopterans are

Great readers of sorts

But don’t enjoy reading

Physics or sports.

They much prefer Hemmingway,

Tolstoy or Shakespeare.

“The classics,” they say,

“Are just so much tastier!”