torley manor

…or we’re gonna have to tattoo that shit on yer hand.

Arise ye volunteers!!!

I’ve been reading Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. I’ve only gotten through 4 of the 12 principles thus far, so I don’t claim to be an expert on Permaculture just yet, but Principle Three — Obtain A Yield — has had relevance to our lives right now.
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On Saturday we held what may very well be the first annual Torley Manor (Angry Gorilla) Blues+Folk Fest. There were short sets by 11 performers, each doing their version of “the blues” or “folk”, either acoustically or via the magic of the Gorilla practice amp (pictured below). There were some great performances, a shit ton of great food, and lots of great friends.

The aforementioned Gorilla amp. The Wild Turkey whiskey we purchased that nobody drank. The wonderful wonderful sun streaming through the windows
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Thus begins a paragraph in Tony Norman’s piece in today’s P-G about how the Founding Fathers would be upset with the state of modern American democracy. Overall I can’t disagree with his premise, but his alluding to Washingtonian vomit made me laugh out loud.

While we started 2008 with fairly amibitious goals for the garden, thus far this year we are having pretty fair results. Many of the flower seeds we planted failed to sprout, i accidentally killed most of our seedlings, the spinach suffered from sunburn early on then quickly bolted, etc. But we’ve persevered. And today a couple little things came along that made me pretty damn happy.

Thing ONE - first tiny “paper lantern” on the tomatillo plant. Sorry didn’t take a picture of that. Plenty of flowers on our two plants we have. Should be a decent crop.

Thing TWO - baby Praying Mantis appeared on the side of our house while we were sitting in the cafe. It quickly ran up the side of the house and we were unable to get a shot. But a short time later the lil’ guy reappeared in the herb pots next to the cafe. This time I was able to get the camera and get a fuzzy picture. The mantis is circled in yellow to help you see him. He appears to be praying to the tiny cross planted in our basil pot.

Thing THREE - tiny pepper. We have historically have had pitiful results growing peppers. Its nice to see this pepper show up this early in the season. Go peppers go!!!!

Emma and I decided to throw another big picnic and house show this year. Its going to be on July 5th. We decided to invite a bunch of people to each play a few songs, but not just any songs in any old way. No no, this is going to be the Torley Manor (Angry Gorilla) Blues+Folk Fest.

The idea was to create some constraints to put everyone on something of a similar playing field. So everyone is being asked to play their version of the blues and/or folk music performed either acoustically or through a Gorilla practice amp. So it’ll be a day of stripped down blues+folk.

Some of the details of the day are still in the making, but veggie/vegan potluck/bbq begins at 1:00 and music will begin at 2:00. There will probably be several blocks of music throughout the afternoon. A detailed schedule of who is playing when should hopefully be posted a couple weeks before the actual event.

Emma and I will be performing together for the first time. Tentatively we have named our project Twin High Maintenance Machines. We had one actual practice thus far and things went much smoother than either of us anticipated. We look forward to performing for you all.

Check back for more details on the event as they become known.

Ok - for awhile now Emma and I have been meaning to do some posts dedicated to media –> what we’ve been reading, watching, listening to, etc. For some reason of another, they just haven’t really happened. But today I will take to the time to review a new CD.

It was with great pleasure that I scored an advance copy of the Flotilla Way “s/t” CD that will be released tomorrow 6/11 at Modern Formations. I will be out of town at a conference and unable to attend the release show, so the lovely ladies of FW were nice enough to give me an advance copy.

I was lucky enough to work with FW back in 2006 in releasing their first batch of music on the 3-way split CD “Hardtravelin 2006: The Year In (Missing) Seven Inches”. FW had five songs on that release. 3 of those 5 songs were re-recorded for this new CD. This release is on a no-name local label (i don’t mean that as a slight, the label quite literally doesn’t have a name). Beautiful packaging and 10 sweet tunes.

For those unfamiliar, FW are three ladies using the standard rock setup (guitar, bass, drums). They play fairly minimalist pop. The vocals range from lovely harmonies to all-out screams. During live performances sometimes the subtle intricacies of FW’s songs can get lost. This new recording does a great job of catching it all. Very crisp and clear.

The only complaints are a lack of printed lyrics and sometimes I feel the recording is a bit tentative and reserved compared to their live show. But overall a wonderful listen.

If you haven’t checked FW out before or haven’t seen them in a long time, do yourself a favor and check them out tomorrow night and grab this new CD.

Holy smokes! The asparagus has sprouted! It has been so rainy and chilly that I was certain that the crowns had rotted underground and we’d never see anything come up.

Lo!

And the sweet potato sprouts got big enough that we plucked ‘em and set them in their own water to grow roots. Progress, my friends!

(L-R: Two-day old sweet potato sprout with already-scummy water, three brand new freshly plucked sprouts, and the momma sweet potato herself.)

Every year I find that I’ve just missed getting any fiddleheads. I guess I don’t really start paying attention to grocery store produce till it’s too late. But this year, some arrived a bit late, and holy smokes, ten bucks a pound. I couldn’t resist and got ‘em anyway.

And then what do you know? I wind up eating them at a restaurant later in the week.

Here’s the dinner I  made:

It’s nothing too fancy but it sure was great: pasta, garlic, spring onions, fiddleheads, and a handful of bella, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms.

While Q was so diligently tearing our house apart, I was backpacking along the Appalachian Mountains.

Here’s a link to the set of photos and captions on Flickr.

A few highlights:

It’s good to know you can count on yourself. That is why I like camping alone.