Nettle Mania

"out of this nettle, danger, we grasp this flower, safety"

-Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 1, Act II Scene 3

Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) are a common weed with a bad reputation--the plant has tiny spines that inject, as Wikipedia puts it, a "cocktail of poisons." Miraculously when you boil the plant the spines lose their punch and you're left with a tasty green consumed plain or incorporated in a number of dishes, from soups to ravioli, to the German cheese pictured above (thanks to Berlin corespondent Steve Rowell for the photo). When dried, the leaves make a damn good tea, with a rich, indescribable flavor. If that ain't enough, nettles pack a powerhouse of vitamins, minerals, and are perhaps the vegetable with the highest protein content (10%).

At the risk of contradicting yesterday's anti-media screed (After all, Marshall McLuhan once said, "If you don't like that idea I've got others."), we'll end with some links to an obscure sub-genre of youtube videos, nettle torture stunts. Mrs. Homegrown could drone on about the psycho-sexual implications of these clips, but that would be fodder for another blog. In the meantime, thanks again to Steve Rowell, here's some nettling to fill your evening hours: here, here and here (just three of what may be hundreds).

TV Turnoff week April 23 - 30, 2008

We don't come from the sackcloth and ashes wing of the urban homestead movement. There's no forced austerity around the Homegrown Evolution compound, no sufferfests, no "more-meek-than-thou" contests. It's about pleasure not denial, after all. But, to use the "d" word, one thing we denied ourselves for many years was television. And during this TV Turnoff week, we thought we'd share our struggles with the tube.

Ten years ago, when we moved into our humble dump, we discovered that the cable tv company could not get past our neighbor's bougainvillea, which fully ensnared the utility pole. The result--free cable. Unfortunately, that's like leaving bowls of blow around Keith Richard's party pad. Free cable meant many hours of channel surfing and, when Mr. Homegrown commandeered the remote, poor Mrs. Homegrown would be subjected to hours down in the video gutter viewing L.A.'s notorious public access (such as this - view at your own risk!).

At some point we decided to give up the TV cold turkey. For a week it seemed like a close friend had died, but soon all those evenings quickly filled with activities. We learned fencing, print making, bread baking and countless other skills. We never regretted exiling the TV to the garage.

Recently the tube's come back into our lives with a certain DVD mail service, but we feel like we've tamed the beast and can heartily recommend living without TV (definitely without cable and broadcast). It's become a shock to see cable or broadcast television when we visit relatives. It seems stupid, crass and violent, with the quick cutting particularly annoying, befitting a culture with no patience for the pleasures of the slow life. A friend of ours, who teaches at a Waldorf school, tells us that she can easily tell which kids live by the school's no TV rule. In short, the TVless kids own their own imagination, rather than the entertainment industry. They're better behaved, faster learners and more patient.

But with the explosion of the internets and gaming, TV Turnoff week has become a quaint reminder of the past, almost like opposing Selectric typewriters. The excesses of television, and the resulting consumer culture, seem fairly benign compared to a medium like the internet which allows governments and corporations to easily track our very move and target advertising on a deeply personal level. We've found that many of the hours we used to spend in front of the TV are now spent in front of the computer. While we heartily endorse TV turnoff week, it's well past time for internet turnoff week.

How about we all turn the damn computer off for awhile, bake bread, make some beer, ride our bikes, or just go get into trouble?

iBullshit

It's amazing how insidious is the real religion of our age, brand allegiance. In the PC vs. Mac argument I often find myself, unconscious and zombie-like, coming to the defense of a company run by a turtle neck wearing multi-billionaire.

Sweater wear aside, Apple's got a lot to answer for on the environmental front. In a provocative earth day post, bike-riding comrade and Apple store employee Mikey Wally calls out Apple for their green bullshit. Read it here.

The New Urban Forager

On a hot, humid day along Houston's Buffalo Bayou, in the shadow of four abandoned concrete silos, a maggot infested corpse of a pit bull lies splayed across a sheet of black plastic. Nearby, a pile of asphalt roofing material blocks the path I'm taking down to one of the most polluted waterways in Texas. Not a promising beginning to an urban food foraging expedition.
(Read the rest of our foraging essay via Reality Sandwich)

The Freeway Ride - On Bicycles!

Proof that it's faster (and a hell of a lot more fun) to commute by bike in Los Angeles:



And extra points for taking the exit from the 10 to the northbound 405. Holy crap!

A Tour of the Homegrown Evolution Compound

It's about damn time we gave an overall tour of the Homegrown Evolution digs, at least to dispel some misconceptions out there (more on those at the end of the post). Let's begin with the front yard, pictured above.

Our house sits up about 30 steps from the street level. Running the laundry water out to the front (using Oasis Biocompatible Detergent), has really made the plants happy. The front yard has a mix of prickly pear cactus, Mexican sage, wormwood, rosemary, lavender, California poppies, and nasturtiums. All low maintenance, drought tolerant, hardy stuff. At the top, not visible in the photo, are the fruit trees we planted and described in an earlier post. Due to extensive foundation work (note to potential home buyers: don't buy a house on a hill!) we've only recently been able to work on the top part of the front yard.

Next the backyard, pictured above (click to bigulate). The extreme wide angle makes it look a lot bigger than it actually is. In reality, the backyard is about 35 feet by 50 feet. Starting on the left and moving right, is an arbor occupying the former space of a terrible add-on that we demolished (and carried down the stairs by hand--once again, don't buy a house on a hill!). In the background is the chicken coop and run, with the herb garden in the foreground. Just to the right of the chicken run are several large artichoke plants. Behind that and out of sight, is a 4' x 8' raised bed for vegetables. Next to the shed is a small orange tree, just planted, that replaced the fig tree we tore out. Dominating the right side of the photo is the avocado tree. Next to that tree is a small dwarf pomegranate, and on the extreme right is another raised bed with strawberries, garlic, mint and a native grape vine, just about to leaf out.

Now to correct some misconceptions:

Our place looks like Versailles. Truth is, at some times, our garden looks terrible. It depends on the season, and the amount of time we have to put into it. It looks good now, but in December it looked like crap. We try to plant things that do well in our climate and provide food, medicine or habitat for birds and beneficial insects. But we've made plenty of mistakes, and continue to do so.

We're survivalists. Can we live off our yard? No. Can we make a meal with stuff from the yard? Yes, but we go to the supermarket just like everybody else--there's no room for a wheat field after all, nor do we grow coffee or a host of other necessary staples. But, we seldom buy greens at the store, and almost never buy herbs or eggs--we've got that taken care of in the garden. In the summer we have lots of tomatoes, and right now we have a few avocados. When the fruit trees mature in a few years we'll have fruit.

We're hippies. Don't get us wrong, we love hippies. We have no problems with cob ovens shaped like psychedelic snails, but that just ain't our style. We've tried to keep things low key, just like our humble 1920s bungalow. This grape vine trailing up the arbor we built sums up our visual style:

Lastly, we like to tuck in a few attractive edibles (packed tightly, as you can see) wherever we can, like this magnificent cabbage, so beautiful we hate to harvest it:

We're not quite back . . .

In response to numerous requests, Homegrown Evolution had intended to give a photo tour of our Los Angeles compound, but computer problems are preventing this. You will all have to settle for the drawing above while we resolve vexing software/hardware issues.

Though not Luddites, we've been contemplating a break from staring at computer screens. And less computering time means we'll have a few moments to give the hovercraft a tuneup.

Mulberries

The Mulberry trees (Morus nigra) along Houston's Buffalo Bayou are producing their delicious fruit. The picture above is an immature berry--this particular tree produces a dark purple berry when ready to eat. Some sources on the internets, as well as Delena Tull's excellent book Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest warn against consuming the unripe fruit, claiming that doing so produces an unpleasant, mildly psychedelic experience. Apparently you throw up, fall on the ground and become convinced you're going to croak. We wonder if this is a myth, like the story about boy scouts roasting hot dogs on Oleander sticks (yes, Oleander is very poisonous, but apparently the boy scout story is an urban legend).

We found the Mulberries sweet and delicious. It's a fruit that doesn't ship well, hence its absence in our crummy supermarkets.

Cooling with Beer . . . Cans

Homegrown Evolution dropped by Houston's famous Beer Can House, created by John Milkovisch in the 1960s and 70s. We won't plumb the messy depths of the meaning of "visionary art", the academic art Mafia's euphemism du jour for this stuff--we'll leave that to our art bloggin' amigo Doug Harvey.

So sidestepping the whole debate over the intentions of its creator, we'll point out that all of Milkovisch's house mods have both aesthetic and practical benefits. The beer can cladding that covers the entire exterior of the house means never having to paint the underlying wood. The concrete yard means never having to mow a lawn (we'd prefer vegetation but Milkovisch's concrete work is, like the rest of the house, magical).

But on to our favorite detail. It's damn hot in Houston most of the year, and to deal with the blazing sun on the south side of his humble bungalow, Milkovisch crafted this intricate, shimmering screen made of beer can tops and bottoms that hangs from the roof line like an aluminum grass skirt. Not only does it shade the windows and walls, producing a dramatic decrease in cooling bills, but it also functions as a pleasing wind chime.

We've been thinking of doing something similar on the hot south side of our house, except with deciduous vines. That way, we'll let light in during the winter and have a living shade wall during the summer. Perhaps we'll grow beans and become Los Angeles' Bean House.

The Beer can house is located at 222 Malone Street in Houston, Texas and is lovingly cared for by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.

Allium ursinum

Allium ursinum, a.k.a. Ramsons (in English), and Bärlauch (bear leeks, or wild garlic in German), are a member of the chive family so named because they are a favored food of bears and wild boar. People can eat em' too, with both the bulb and leaves making a tasty addition to a number of dishes (see a detailed report on Allium ursinum in the Plants for a Future website).

Favoring semi-shade, Allium ursinum thrives in moist, acidic soil--forest conditions, in other words. In short, not appropriate for our climate in Los Angeles, but folks in the northwest might consider planting some. Like all members of the Allium species it's toxic to dogs, but we've never had a problem with our dog eating onions (he prefers raiding our avocado tree and tomato bushes for illicit snacks).

Special thanks to Steve Rowell of the Center for Land Use Interpretation for the photos and report. Rowell spotted this tasty vegetable at a farmer's market in Berlin where they are a popular seasonal addition to cafe menus and even to packaged items like pesto and ravioli. If only we'd catch on to the seasonal thing in America . . .