Planning for Loose Tea

     I have purchased a hanging dehydrator to put above my air outside air conditioning heat exchanger. This will allow for hot air to be blown over the herbs, drying them much more quickly than they would dry any other way outside of a solar heater or solar cooker. Drying anything can be tough in Florida, as the humidity on most days is usually greater than 80%. In the past i have had leaves grow mold as they are drying out, which does not make for appetizing fare. I dont even give those leaves to the rabbits! 

     I will have to take some pictures of the dehydrator along with a review of the process. I plan on drying leaves and flowers of my many plants that can contribute to health and wellness, including ginger, loquat, lemon, and tangerine.

     I thonk its both amusing and sad that a lot of the innovations in gardening and herbology that have come out of our recent technology boom have come about because of marijuana products. This dehydrator comes with tiny snips which are obviously for cutting bud. Not that I care about that, they will snip other leaves just fine.

Rat burgers

     I had a bad week at work last week. Actually only about 5 minutes of it was bad, the rest of the week was the usual - training people how to do things, answering dumb questions, dealing with people who think they know more and/or think they are the boss of me. Truly usual. But the bad 5 minutes was pretty bad, and I left the building crying, drove home crying.

     It got me thinking about leaving the hospital and going back to being awake during the day and asleep at night.  I could work at my part time job, I do really like it and its fairly easy. There are still times where its actually very much work, but most of the time its great. The money is pretty good too, and they seem to have enough work that I could work whenever. I wouldnt have to be locked into full time hours either, which would be nice. I could work a lot on my days without the kids and work less when i have them.

     I could start working on things around my house. Not just the broken water heater and the sliding doors that dont slide and the malfunctioning light switch. But more like the stuff that I want to do to be more self sufficient. I could grow more plants and sell them. I could put up the mice or rat cages and start raising them.

     A quick trip to Rural King opened my eyes up to the new consumerism. They no longer carry small animal cages. Their stock is very different now. I guess everything for most of my projects will have to be bought online. They dont even carry the wire mesh that I had previously bought when I made the rabbit cages. And I couldnt find the dog crates at all.

     I want the mice or rats so they can eat the weeds my yard produces and make me fertilzer. Then I joke about cooking the rats and eating them, but why is that so funny? Why not cook rats and eat them? Or at least, make them into rat burgers. Is that crazy?

Would you eat mice?

     There are a few signs that the economy is a fluctuation, hopefully not leading us into a major recession. The good news is that there seems to be a lot of jobs. The bad news is that the price of groceries and gasoline is going up. While I cannot change the prices of these goods, it seems that it would be smartest to build some reseliency into my own life for my own future.

     I would be interested in hearing what you would do if the price of food rose so high it became unaffordable. Would you eat the goldfish in your pond? What about frogs and grasshoppers? How would you feel about raising mice and grilling them for dinner?

Found this image on the internet. Enjoy!

Baby Black Grass

     Better fences make for better neighbors, right?
     I had a problem. my neighbors had been cutting my lawn as if he thought it belonged to them. Typical. So I told the one it wasn't alright to destroy the grass in my yard by over mowing. He claimed he couldn't tell where my yard started. I assumed the other neighbor had the same issue.

     So I cut some of the Napier grass and stuck them into the bare sand, as if daring them to grow. The method is simple, make sure each cutting has three nodes on it. Then bury two of the nodes, keeping the third above the soil. Water occasionally.

The cuttings on the far side of the yard, freshly planted.

      The thing I like the most about Napier grass is that it looks like a beautiful black bamboo. Or maybe I like it because it grows very well here with no care. Or maybe because it makes a great easy to harvest rabbit food.

     I am dying to plant some of this grass out at my forest near the road. There it can aid in the prevention of erosion and create some more natural privacy. Plus it looks cool.

     After winter ended, I trimmed it down to the ground and mulched the trimmings. Then the napier grass grew uniformly, healthily, not unlike its smaller green counterparts. 

Mice, Not Wabbits

     Last fall two of my three rabbits passed on, likely due to old age. I had originally acquired them ten years ago to be a breeding trio, and to be eating the kits they produced. Back then I had someone who would help me with the slaughtering. Time passed, and things changed, and I stopped breeding the rabbits. 

     They became my little garden buddies, and they only required daily water and about three bags of rabbit food a year. I had them under strict orders to mulch or manure all of the (safe) trimmings and weeds that I provided. And they were good at it. I am particularly proud of the water hyacinth - rabbit combo to pull nutrients from the ponds and turn it into nutrients for my favorite cannas and loquats.

      As I look to the future I wonder if it wouldnt be smarter to raise mice instead of rabbits? They are smaller and easier to manage, breed just as readily as rabbits, and can be easily maintained on a garden-provided vegan diet. They should also eat the water hyacinth and produce a nutritious manure. 

     Moreover, the meat could potentially be used to feed my cats. It would be a good complete diet for them. And cheap! One of the girls at work says that she buys mice for her 🐍... Perhaps I could be selling additional mice. They would probably be easier to unload than rabbits! And any escapees would be hunted by the neighborhood cat strays.

     I am liking the idea of this. What do you think?

Cannas

     If you've met me, you probably know that I gush over cannas, my favorite root vegetable. And I have never eaten a single one other than the green leaves. 

    I was introduced to the fun and ease of growing bulbs and tubers when I briefly lived in Michigan, and the love of it has stayed with me with cannas, amaryllis, and taro. Cannas are my best, they have amazing flowers for months on end.

     Sadly, over the years my canna collection has been dying down, mostly due to neglect and cold winter weather. Im not going to pretend that I am a perfect person. I have three kids and a job, trying to fit in exercise and watering the plants has been rough.

     They absolutely need water in the summer to survive. The native Florida cannas, which I have none of, grow in boggy areas at the edges of ponds and lakes. I havent ever seen any growing in a river. Mine are in pots sunken into my ponds, many of which I built primarily for canna and water hyacinth culture. And yes, the rabbits love to eat cannas!

     My mother bought me these bright pink beauties for my birthday last year. Maybe I had told her how much I loved the pink ones with the big flowers. And these, like my few other pinks, appear to be dwarf cannas, not climbing the 8 feet like the nondwarf variety.

    Somehow these have not just survived, but thrived in the location that I placed them, chosen mostly for safety. They have been blooming since March, and its now almost June. The tubers are growing so large they have nearly broken the plastic pot holding them. The leaves have been yellowing, notbsurebif thats from packnof nutrition, the heat, or fromndyingbdownnat the end of the season. I want to divide the pinks and repot, but when I get a few minutes to take care of it I realize that they have sent up yet another flower. Which begs the question:

     Do tropical bulbs need to be separated after flowering is completed, or can you separate them and transplant at any time?

     

   

🍍 Pineapple

This pineapple has only taken about 5 years to start creating new life.

I guess this one must be Red Spanish.

from Catalogue of Rare Florida Flowers and Fruits:1894

Water hyacinth

     Hands down, my favorite vegetable to grow in the garden is an edible perennial called Water Hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes.) It's the vegetable that I eat most regularly. It requires very little ❤. It's hardy in our winters. It's edible by the rabbits.

     My favorite way to eat them is to slice the airbulbs lengthwise until the size of greenbeans, then stir fry on the stove with mushrooms, garlic, and oil. The water hyacinth ends up tasting like green beans and is just as healthy.

     I literally love this plant so much it's become part of my retirement strategy - to cut down on food costs by growing as much as possible at home. I plan on cooking and eating it several times a week at least. And it does need to be cooked to ensure safety.

     In the summer I harvest the plants, cut off the roots, and feed them whole to the rabbits. The plants are high in plant protein, which is difficult for the rabbits to get in their diet. Between the water hyacinth and the napier grass, I think that I can make a complete diet for the rabbits.

from the Catalogue of Rare Florida Flowers and Fruits: 1894

Job stuff

     I have had the same job for the past 5 years. Its been enlightening, tough, sometimes emotionally rough, but always interesting. Its been at a hospital during the night shift - where I am assigned a team of patients, and have to manage all their healthcare needs. It can be fun, even enjoyable, to help a person. It can be rough, even disheartening, to be manipulated by patients.

     I'm not leaving the hospital. At least not soon. But I am going to slide into a different position at the hospital, and pick up a part time job during the day seeing patients in their homes. I would work more at the hospital, but no one in my family seems to be interested in watching the youngest overnight. Ever. Even though he sleeps great. Ok thats not totally true my mother does help sometimes but she lives so far away. But his father refuses to take him for half the week, just will have him the minimum amount of time possible.

     I am so excited about this day job. I just dropped off the money and paperwork for Peanuts first day at daycare. He will theoretically be at daycare two days a week, not a terrible trade off. I will have to make enough money to offset that investment, if i see three patients in two days its paid for and it pays for the wear on the car. So if i can see 4 patients each day both Thursday and Friday, it would be awesome. Plus I wont be bored during the day, stuck in the house with the youngest.

Piper auritum, Rootbeer Plant, Mexican Pepperleaf, Hoja Santa

    I found this beautiful plant at a plant sale at the local botanical gardens. One of the cute ladies there stopped me and said, "Are you sure you really want to buy that? It's invasive!"
     I looked down at the inncoent little plant. It had one seed leaf and one true leaf and a REALLY cheap price. Then I considered my scale of invasiveness (fucking bamboo at damn near the top, followed up quickly by burmuda grass and orange honeysuckle) versus her scale of invasiveness (who knows) and replied that yes, I was going to buy the edible invasive Mexican plant. I have other wonderful edible plants of Mexican origin, like the Cardinal Sage and the Agave Americana. What could go wrong?
     It took Rootbeer plant almost a year to start growing, but at the start of the rainy season it took off. Its still one compact plant, and hasn't sent out any runners that I can find. It has started to form the unusual white growths shown in the picture. I can't wait to see what happens with those.
     Culinarily, according to Wikipedia it is most commonly used to wrap food (meat and fish) in prior to steaming much as corn husks and banana leaves are used. It has safrole in it, the main ingredient in sassafrass, which is considered to be a carcinogen. So it appears that eating large amounts of Rootbeer plant is not a good idea, even though it is one of the main ingredients in mole verde and is used to make tea and add flavor to chocolate drinks.

     I have found that rootbeer plant does freeze down where it is planted in my front yard, but it came back in the spring. Its still a very compact plant, attractive, and smells fantastic.