The humble radish

The farmers in our valley have taken mightily to planting grass seed for the last few years. It's an easy and profitable crop, I suppose, but I hate it. It is not picturesque at all, and in the spring and early summer it causes almost unbearable allergies for many of us who live here, both when the seed sets and when it is harvested. Once in a while, the fields near our house will be planted with wheat, which is easy on the eyes and doesn't seem to cause the allergies.

This spring, a new crop came to town and no one could identify it. My friend and I were walking past a field of it one day and wondering aloud about it. A man was walking his dog and told us, very authoritatively, that it was a dry crop of beets for seed. Well, I was thrilled to be in the know, and proceeded to tell everyone I met about it.

The plants grew rapidly and soon the fields were a white swath of gorgeousness.

Photos began to show up on my facebook newsfeed and I was happy to inform people that they were beets.

However, as time went by, I began to wonder about the veracity of my information. The roots didn't look like beets and the greens grew very quickly, so I had a little talk with Google. It took longer than my usual research forays, but I finally identified the plants as radishes. Not your usual little pink globes, mind you, but big old white roots, almost like daikon radishes. 

It wasn't too long before the flowers disappeared and seed pods took their place.

Millions and millions of rather fat seed pods.

This cover crop is amazing. It grows rapidly, suppresses weeds with its quick canopy cover, doesn't need irrigating, and pulls huge amounts of nutrients from deep in the soil so that later crops can utilize them. If the roots are left to rot over winter, they aereate the soil and allow for water penetration the following year. The roots also break up compacted soil. 

Radish is a brassica, and plants produce a compound which is toxic to soil-borne pests (such as nematodes) and pathogens. The greens can be used for forage or the seed for oil, depending on which variety is grown.

Why do I care about this stuff?

I don't know. I just do. It eats at me until I have found answers to all of the questions.

And now you know too.

I would have to disagree with William Andrus Alcott, who said, quite famously in "The Young Housekeeper," that "radishes, though often eaten, are miserable things."

I have to pronounce radishes to be quite marvelous.

As long as you don't ask me to eat one.

That's no monkey...that's me!

Thomy and Jeff's birthdays are in May, so I thought ahead and bought a Groupon (or some such thing) for a trip to the Wildlife Safari in Winston, down in southern Oregon. We took the kids there years ago, but it was so long ago that I couldn't remember much about it.

The boys slept over at our house the night before, so that we could get an early start.

The trip took a little less than three hours. I printed off some travel games before we left, which was a lifesaver. The boys played travel bingo and checked state license plates off a master list as we traveled down the interstate. 

Jeff slept a little. 

Not big Jeff. He was driving.

The park is well known for its cheetah breeding programme, which is about the only thing I remembered from our first trip. 

Exotic birds abound.

We stopped in the petting zoo. Thomy was up for feeding the goats, but Jeff was a bit hesitant until he saw that Thomy survived the experience unscathed.

Nana looks a little manic, and it's still early in the day!

The boys decided they would love to ride on the camel, so I thought, what the heck, the entry ticket was cheap enough!

I do think that camels have great character in their faces, don't you?

We decided that camel rides were over-rated, not worth the $10 for the five minutes or so of ride, so we signed up for the hippopotamus experience later in the afternoon. Meanwhile, we ate lunch and did the driving safari. This takes about 45 minutes and was great fun, because of all the different animals and birds that are running free. 

 

There were several of these bears, just dozing in the sun.

You can buy emu food and the cars ahead of us were feeding them. Of course, a couple of them had to check out our car too. They were quite brazen, and this one had rather an evil eye, I think, but it turns out he looked scarier than he really was.

I do love a real, live flamingo. Or ten.

Finally, the time arrived to board the safari truck for the hippo experience. 

We learned lots of interesting things about hippos, most of which I have forgotten.

BUT.

I am the Queen of Google, a title I share with my sister, so I found some fascinating facts for you.

Hippos can hold their breath underwater for five minutes.

When in Africa, they spend up to sixteen hours a day submerged in water, trying to keep cool in the hot, African sun.

Hippos can weigh around 3,000 pounds, yet they can easily outrun a human, being able to reach 19 mph for short distances. They are also very unpredictable and are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.

The giraffes had just finished their own encounter, where, of course, they had been fed, so this one ambled over to our truck to see if it could scrounge some from us as well.

It was a thrill; two encounters for the price of one, just my kind of thing!

How come giraffes are so stinking cute?

It was quite determined, and tried it from all angles. It stuck its head over the side wall of the truck.

Eventually, the hippo keeper convinced the giraffe that there was no food for it, so it cast us this disgusted look (you see it too, right?) and ambled away.  

A hippopotamus has a very big mouth.

These are both males and they are very well trained.

We had seen just about everything once and some things twice by now, so we decided to go home.

There is a restaurant near the freeway entrance. It is called Noah's Burgers and looked like a fun place, so we stopped there to eat before we started the return trip home.

It was pretty weird, more of a ministry than a restaurant, so we took a few photos and used their bathrooms and headed on home. A rather odd little old man and woman, all dressed up as Noah and his wife, run the place. I am sure their intentions are good, but I didn't fancy microwaved burgers and tater tots for dinner.

We stopped at Burger King instead, which seemed to make everyone happy.

It was a fun day and I hope the boys remember it for a long time.

Jeff's weekend at his happy place

Jeff is always hankering to spend a weekend out at Vista House, so this weekend, we did. 

We headed out around noon on Thursday. I wheedled him into a stop in Sisters at Drawstrings of Malibu, where I stocked up my summer wardrobe. Cotton and loose are my buzz-words of the season, and their clothes fit the bill quite nicely. I even found some dresses that fit and look cute, so I bought four of them in different colours, thinking they were only $19.99 each, like the shirts I bought on the clearance rack. 

As we drove out of Sisters, I checked the receipt, thinking the total was a little high. Sure enough, the dresses were twice that. 

Jeff said, keep them. 

I said, no! 

So we turned around and I returned two of them. 

Jeff said, you should have kept them.

Jeff spent all of Friday up in his man-cave, doing reports for his job, so I worked on some projects and dinked around on facebook. The weather was kinda gloomy anyway, so I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

I sewed up some tote bags out of feed bags that have been haunting me for months. I discovered that the bags wash up rather nicely in the washing machine, and that sped up the process. I love these bags, they are so strong and only cost thread and a little time.

Saturday dawned sunny and mild. I walked around the track with my neighbour, who gave us some Russian sage starts from her garden. (Jeff is getting into local flora and has great plans for inundating our property with perennials that will crowd out the cheat grass and tumbleweed.) 

Then we went into Redmond to the farmers' market/street fair, which was disappointing in that there was no produce at all, so we drove on to Sisters to the Freedom Festival.

While we drive around in this part of the country, I crochet dishcloths from cotton yarn that I pick up at garage sales. I have a craft debt to pay to a few facebook friends and I'm pushing to get it finished, so my stash increased a lot this weekend. 

They are kinda ugly, but very useful.

There is something going on at Creekside Park almost every weekend in the summer. This was a patriotic sort of event and I think it might be its first year. Most businesses in Sisters rely on tourism for their income, and it's a grand place to visit in the summer. 

The stalls were no great excitement, but we did buy some fudge because somebody who is not me tried some samples and couldn't live without it. 

We sat and listened to the Blonde Divas for half an hour. Their music was old-time (think Andrews Sisters) and thoroughly enjoyable. They asked for the oldest veteran in the audience, which turned out to be an 88-year-old man who had been in World War II. He told us that he had heard the Andrews Sisters in a USO tour when he was overseas and actually got to dance with one of them.

Awesome.

And their last song was Good Bless the USA, and everyone within earshot stood in respect.

We wandered around some galleries for a while, which is one of my favourite activities, but Jeff started to get a migraine so I told him to go sleep in the car while I carried on.

Sisters is visually very interesting, with a feast for the eyes every way you turn.

What looks like quilts blowing in the wind is actually a mural on the side of a building. Sisters hosts the world's largest outdoor quilt show on the second Saturday of July every year. I hear it is crazy, but I haven't braved it yet.

I was wondering where the name of the town originated, and then after I Googled it I felt dumb. It is, of course, named after the Three Sisters, nearby mountains.

The road through town has just been upgraded. The buildings are well-kept and keep to the Western theme.

Jeff joined me after a while and, in one of the galleries, we ran into a guy who was doing a trade bead show. So here's a thing I never knew existed. There is a whole culture of people who collect old-world trade beads.

These are actual beads that were used for trading all over the world. Many of these beads are over 500 years old and are worth hundreds of dollars for a strand. The historical aspect is fascinating, and the guy was a source of good stories. Many of these are found in archaeological digs, but sometimes they turn up in grandma's attic and the family has no idea what they have. I will never look at old beads the same way again.

After spending an hour talking to the guy and his wife, I wanted a strand of trade beads so bad I could taste it. But I knew it was a frivolous desire, so I stomped on it and resisted the urge. But one of these days it may resurface and I will be doomed!

Around almost every corner is some sort of art work.

Some of the restaurants even get into the act.

Sisters is in the high desert, but many fountains and water features help to lessen the harshness of the environment.

We headed home a little earlier than planned so that Jeff could sleep off his migraine before we went to the annual party that is thrown by our neighbours up the road. Last year, we didn't go, even though we were invited, and the loud music kept us awake until midnight. Jeff finally called them and asked them to quieten down, which they did immediately. 

I was hoping they didn't remember the incident.

Jeff enjoyed talking to all the military vets and playing horseshoes with the youngest son.

I sat quietly on the deck and worked on my crocheting, happy to listen to the good music until dinner was served. There was lots of excellent barbecued chicken, and moonshine. Yes, real moonshine, from Mississippi. Or so we were told.

We went home before dark, as did most of the folk older than twenty, but the music continued again till exactly midnight. We could hear it even with all of the windows closed.

Today, after church, Jeff hung our new flag,

admired his Coastguard windsock,

and painted the trees on the sign green.

Then he did some wood carving on the front porch,

while admiring the view.

He's a lucky man!