Rethinking Environmental Health

grand rapids (ohio)

somehow i ended up in napoleon ohio teaching a class to a bunch of public health nurses, some head start workers and two weatherization project managers and after i was done for the day i got some indian food in a truck stop restaurant with bill (they also had chicken lickin’, blimpy, pizza and american fried food on the menu but the owners were east indian).  with the long day two days after daylight’s savings i had a long evening to kill and so i got in my rental car to explore the insanely flat and open farmland around the (not so best) best western where I was holed up for two days so I drove to the closest thing resembling interesting topograpahy, the maumee river, and drove west when i noticed some blue paint marks on every third or fourth telephone pole along the left side of the road.  the north country trail?

Notable New Music Coming Out of West Michigan… Again?

Two years ago, the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble released a recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians that ended up reaching #1 on the iTunes and Amazon classical charts, and spending eleven weeks on the Billboard charts.  That recording received accolades from coast to coast.

Two years later, GVSUNME knocks another one out of the park with Terry Riley’s In C. The project is called In C Remixed.

Climbing Mountains

Last winter, Abbey and I found two huge maps to put up on the walls of her bedroom.  We look at them at times and talk about all the places Daddy has been and where Abbey would like to go.

Earlier this year, we got to talking about vacation plans, and Abbey remembered hearing about the Catskill Mountains in New York.  I think it was the name that caught her fancy.

She decided that for vacation she wanted to go “climbing mountains.”  So that’s what I planned — a trip to the Catskill Mountains to places where we would need to scramble up the trail.

Mini-Julie

Rare Find

Purple Fringed Orchid

Last weekend we spent two days mowing sections of the North Country Trail.  The weather was beautiful and we got to spend some quality time in the woods.

When we were mowing one particular section of trail, Frank and I came across this rare beauty–a Purple Fringed Orchid.

According to Michigan Wildflowers in Color (Lund, Harry C. 1999), this is a “protected Michigan wildflower.”

Are you interested in where we found it so you can see it for yourself next summer?

Perkins is Producing!

Toscano kale and Red Bull beets

I received an email from my mom today and she was bragging about eating fresh tomatoes and summer squash from her garden.  While tomatoes are a ways off up here in Michigan, the greens and other early crops are coming in strong.

Perkins 2009

Everything is a bit slow this spring, especially my blogging and the garden.  There’s really no excuse for the lack of blogging except for laziness.  For the garden, the reason is an unseasonably cool spring.

The one big change at Perkins this year is that Abbey has her own garden plot.  It’s located in the midst of our veggies, and I helped her plant some corn, soy beans, strawberries, and flowers.  She chose what she wanted to plant, and picked out the flowers at Kingma’s with her mom.  The  strawberries were rescues from an abandoned garden and are the ever-bearing variety.

Ice Age

The ice on the inside of the cold frame this morning was a wonderful reflection of what February has been like… cold, but with beautiful and interesting weather patterns.  And lots of ice.  As a result, I have two ice stories to share on this blog.

And for those of you wondering about life in the coldframe behind this curtain of ice crystals, there’s plenty of Italian parsley up, and spinach and arugula are a-sprouttin’!

Happy New Year!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy New Year and to share a photo of what Abigail did on New Year’s Day.

As we did last year, we joined some friends at a cabin down at Pinckney-Waterloo for some food, festivities and hiking.  One person who joined us was Dave Augee, a local who spends plenty of time on the trails and lakes in the area.

Dave brought along his ice fishing gear so that he could show Abbey (and the rest of us) how he fishes through the ice.  We went out at dusk to try our luck, but the wind drove us off the lake before anything was caught.

Abbey was rather amazed at the prospect of walking across frozen lakes, let alone fishing through the ice.