But of course they’re absolutely right. If I want fresh veggies in fall and maybe winter (I’m not too sure about this winter business), I have to start the seeds early.

And I never did plant broccoli this year, so maybe that would be a good thing to try. Hmmmm….

Thank you to Cooking Up a Story — a great resource for people interested in food!

But now the tomato plants are doing well, although there’s still no fruit.

And we should be eating zucchini within a day or two.

The carrots and green onions are finally getting big enough to eat. I put in some Walla Walla onion starts, too. Our neighbor had too many, so she gave me a bunch. I planted some individually, which will hopefully turn into real Walla Walla onions. We’re just using the tops of the rest.

We also harvested all of the remaining lettuce! We’ve been taking leaves as needed, but with hot weather here I decided to just pull the rest before it bolted.  There was at least four or five gallons of lettuce, so we gave some to neighbors. I’ll be replanting the lettuce area with carrots and bush beans.

The fava beans and peas are now gone, too.  I harvested three big bowls of fava beans before pulling the plants…which came out to about two cups once they were shelled. The favas did make a good cover crop; they do keep out the weeds, and supposedly they put nitrogen in the soil too. But it wasn’t a very efficient method of growing food.  The peas didn’t do very well, probably because of the weather, but we did eat fresh peas with a couple of meals.

The strawberries are about done, so I don’t have anything to preserve at the moment, but I did buy a water bath canning kettle for later. I did the strawberry jam in my big stock pot, which worked fine, but it doesn’t hold many jars and doesn’t have a proper rack. So now we have a kettle for doing applesauce and tomatoes when the time comes.  I’m thinking about peaches and blueberries, too.

In my last garden update, I didn’t have specific gardening goals. I’ve decided on a couple over time. My current goals are to grow enough tomatoes both for eating and canning, and to have enough enough zucchini to eat at least twice a week.  I now have four tomato plants intended for canning (Heinz 2653 variety) and four intended for eating (with the option to can), and the zucchini plants, as you saw, are beginning to produce.  If I don’t end up with enough tomatoes, I’ll buy some, possibly via pick-your-own.

How is your garden coming along? Is it coming along? I know we’re not the only ones with weird weather.

I heard about it because BikePortland mentioned on Twitter that Jack Bogdanski of Jack Bog’s Blog had made note of the piece. He called the report “sad, funny, or both,” chastising the CCC because they weren’t investigating why racial and ethnic minorities “don’t have job opportunities, or health care, or good schools.” And BikePortland rightly noted that the CCC is a cycling advocacy group; that’s what they DO.

It’s not like the Oregon Food Bank is spending donor money to research cycling among minorities. It’s an organization focused specifically on cycling.  And isn’t this better than spending money only on, say, recreational cycling, which benefits an even smaller group of people?

Also, strangely enough, riding bikes can help people with economic concerns as well.

To have a job, or to attend school, one has to have transportation. A bike is a great way to have transportation and to be independent of both the price of gasoline and the vagaries of Tri-Met budget cuts and fare increases.  That’s the biggest reason why I ride a bike to work. I’m not doing it to be cool. I’m doing it because we really can’t afford to have another car and the accompanying expense of gas and insurance. It helps that I also know it’s the right thing to do for our future. But I don’t know if I’d be that strong if it weren’t also economically necessary.

So, having a bike opens up one’s job opportunities, and can also help one save money in order to get ahead. What are the barriers, then? According to BikePortland, the CCC found that “three main themes emerged as barriers to biking: the cost of bikes and their upkeep, concerns about safety, and the logistics of riding (where to do it, what the rules are, and so on).”

Which brings us to geography. I’ve pointed out before that not so many people cycle out where I live.  Many people of racial and ethnic minorities have been pushed into outlying areas of Portland, where rents are cheaper, and that is exactly where bicycle infrastructure is lacking as well.  Check out the map – my neighborhood is one of the outlined areas.

So yes, we do have both geographical and racial/ethnic inequities in our bicycling system in Portland. And yes, that is important.  Hopefully the city will be able to scrape together money to build up the infrastructure in East Portland and other underserved areas; we are slated for at least one bicycle boulevard/traffic calming project at this time, and we have an East Portland Action Plan Bicycle Subcommittee that’s working with the city on infrastructure and bicycling activities (I’ve been loosely involved with this).

What do you think? If you’re not in Portland, is it like this where you live?

Today was the second day of 30 Days of Biking.  I rode my bike to work as usual yesterday, but not today. Today’s weather included wind (with high wind warnings), rain, hail, sunshine, and temperatures in the low 40s.  This morning was awful, and I rode the bus to work (while also missing a connection and having to wait 10 minutes without an umbrella, but whatever).

The rain held off long enough for me to pick up the girls and walk home, and then cleared up again after dinner so that we could take a short ride. And I do mean short! We just went around the block (which is actually several blocks long), maybe half a mile or so. But it counts — 30 Days of Biking doesn’t require you to commute or go car-free, just ride a bike at least once a day.

And then the setting sun blazed out when we got home.

Then, this past week I saw a suggestion from the local Master Gardeners’ twitter account:

Cover crop that feeds nitrogen to your soil? Plant fava beans now for spring eats, plant tomatoes when they’re done. Bam! Bam!

That sounded good. I Googled “how to grow fava beans” and found Harvest to Table, which told me that fava beans are a perfect cool-weather crop.  The site also told me how to plant and grow the beans, how many to plant per person in the family, and that they can be eaten fresh or can be frozen, canned or dried. I already knew that fava beans could be used to make both hummus and falafel, which are favorites of mine.

I didn’t, however, click the link for how to prepare and cook broad beans and fava beans. It didn’t worry me. I’ve cooked beans before.  So we planted them on Saturday. But on Sunday, my sister asked me “Have you ever actually cooked fava beans before?”

“Um, no,” I answered. “What?”

“Aren’t those the ones you have to shell twice?” my mother interjected cheerfully.

“Yes,” Wendy answered, explaining that while you’re supposed to be able to just eat them unshelled when they’re young, with mature fava beans “you have to shell them and then cook them and then shell each one individually.”

Uh oh.  We didn’t say any more about fava beans.  I looked it up later on Harvest to Table, and it’s true. Mature fava beans have to be removed from the outer pod, just like shelling peas, but then you have to cook them and “skin” them before eating.

That will be time-consuming. Perhaps we can just pre-cook them all and have a skinning party!

I’m still pleased to be gardening again.  And it’s not just fava beans. We’ve got an 8 X 8 raised bed (it’s the one that had pumpkins last year), and this time I’ve divided it down the middle with a small footpath, and then into squares à la Square Foot Gardening with twine.  My youngest helped me set up the squares; she handed me nails and cut the twine with scissors.

One row of squares is all fava beans, planted four seeds to a square.  There’s also a square each of carrots, lettuce and scallions. We planted these with some old-ish seeds to see if the seeds are still good. If they are, we’ll plant more (and if they’re not, we’ll open a less old-ish packet).  And we planted peas along the wire trellis.

In addition, the daffodils are blooming! I don’t do flowers in a big way, but I do like to have something blooming, and the daffodils are super-easy (as in, I do nothing whatsoever with them except deadheading).

I know some of you probably live in the land of still-frozen ground (I’m in zone 8, by the way), but is anyone else planting or starting seeds now?

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Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodista/ / CC BY 2.0

If you do live in Portland, you’ve probably heard more than enough about it; it’s been on all of the TV stations and in all the newspapers, and Jesse Jackson even came to town to talk about it.

You might not be familiar with the neighborhood where this occurred, though. It’s called Argay.Some of Argay (the uphill part) contains large, split-level suburban homes.  The part closer to Sandy Boulevard has many aging apartment complexes with lower-income residents.  That’s where the Sandy Terrace Apartments are.

Oregonian columnist Anna Griffin says “Sandy Terrace is less a neighborhood and more a collection of one- and two-bedroom islands. The nearest park, grocery and school are beyond an easy walk. The soundtrack comes from trucks on Sandy Boulevard, trains on the Union Pacific tracks and airplanes at Portland International Airport.”

That’s pretty typical of East Portland. Even nicer neighborhoods often lack services within walking distance, and people don’t necessarily know their neighbors.  Griffin’s headline says “Portland’s poor eastside planning didn’t kill Aaron Campbell, but it sure didn’t help.”

What do neighborhood amenities have to do with a man being shot? Griffin asks “How can community policing work in a place with no sidewalks or streetlights? How do you meet your neighbors when your door opens onto a parking lot?”

The police on-scene, as far as I can tell, didn’t know Campbell. If they’d had an opportunity to know him beforehand, maybe they and/or he would have acted differently. And maybe if the apartment complex were more community-oriented, other residents would have paid attention when things started going wrong. According to Angie Jones, Campbell’s girlfriend, Campbell went out into the parking lot of the apartment complex several hours before his death and fired his gun into the air. No one called the police or even looked outside.

These are places “which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist is not to live, according to any true definition of living,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes said. And yet, this is the kind of place where my husband and I have spent most of our married life thus far, even after having children.  We live in a “nice” house now only because we got a screaming deal in which we traded companionship for an elderly lady for rent. She’s since died, but our landlord continues to charge us an affordable rent. So we live in an older but fairly middle-class neighborhood, although there is plenty of poverty in the area, too (at least 63% of students at the local school are getting free and reduced-price lunches).

Otherwise, we’d probably still be in an aging apartment complex or duplex somewhere. Is that a bad thing? Shootings really don’t happen every day out here; most of the time it’s not dangerous. But I saw a friend (whom I do know to be a caring and compassionate person) comment the other day that “My worst fear is living in a 2 bedroom, suburban, white-trash apartment complex. We can do two bedrooms, it’s all the other rug-rats that scare me – and the influence on my kids.”

I admit, I’ve had that kind of thought, too. I’ve considered (and continue to consider for the future) homeschooling my kids, both to make sure they get a good education and because I fear peer influence. I especially don’t want to see them bullied or ostracized in middle and high school (which can happen regardless of students’ socioeconomic status).

But I also (and I’m sure my friend does, too) care about what happens to those other kids. If I opt out of the local school, or if we move out of the neighborhood to someplace more desirable, I’m not loving and helping my neighbors, and what kind of lesson is that for my children?

I don’t want to ignore the Sandy Terraces in our communities. And, as Griffin says in her column, the city shouldn’t ignore them either. Poorer areas deserve urban planning services, and the people there count just as much as those in the “better” neighborhoods.

There are some streets with good bike lanes, and there are quiet residential streets that are no trouble for cycling (except when people decide it’s OK to drag-race down those streets).  But what’s really difficult sometimes is that there are significantly fewer cyclists on the road.

There are a few Bicycle Commuters who use the bike lanes on East Burnside. You can identify them by their bright yellow jackets and Spandex. They’re also much faster than I am. Cycling is serious business for them.

There are always a few people on clunker bikes or BMX bicycles, in casual clothing (possibly jeans and plaid shirts).  They are usually male. I won’t assume that this applies to everyone who looks like this, but there is a segment of the population here that bicycles because they have to, either because they can’t afford a car or because they have a DUI or some other obstruction to being a licensed driver.

Sometimes, usually on weekends, I see people who look like recreational cyclists.  They’re often riding cruisers, or pulling baby trailers.

And of course there are children, especially in the summer or going to and from school.

…

But there’s no one quite like me.  The others are usually thinner. They don’t have bikes like mine, and they’re not using the bike as a family vehicle.

I did see a bakfiets in the wild at work one day.  We were outside in front of the school for a bus safety drill (or something), and I saw someone ride by. A bakfiets in East Portland?  Fortunately for them, it wasn’t a good time for me to hop on my bike, chase them down and demand that they become my BFF immediately.

Maybe I should place a personal ad.

You: Riding a bakfiets down SE 1xxth on September something-or-other. Me: Junoesque with dark curly hair, standing near the Xtracycle in the school parking lot. CALL ME!

What’s it like where you live? Are there bicyclists like you? Or like me?

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Photo credits

Burnside Bridge Bike Commuter by kworth30 http://www.flickr.com/photos/kworth30/ / CC BY 2.0

Child Cycling by Kathleen McDade

Mom and Kid by Suzy McDade

Pushing a Bakfiets by ZeNahla http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeinah/ / CC BY 2.0

You can still catch the last few hours of the podcast (it ends at 10:00 p.m. Pacific) at http://30hourday.org, and you can still make a donation through Facebook.  Please think about helping out! Thanks.

What do we wear?

Me: Tights, slacks, wool socks, turtleneck, wool sweater, fleece jacket, knitted muffler, wool hat with ear flaps, knitted gloves (I feel like a character from a Richard Scarry book now).  I have a wool coat for recess duty and other non-cycling times, but it was so cold today (the high was 31) that we had indoor recess.

Kids: Two layers of clothing, top and bottom. Wool socks or tights if possible. Puffy winter coats. Knit hats under helmets, but I think they just wear their hoods when not cycling. Gloves or mittens. Scarves if they want them (puffy coats generally cover the neck).

Does it work?  Mostly. I’m glad we don’t have to go too far. Coming back tonight, my fingers were getting pretty numb. I’m planning to use an extra pair of gloves tomorrow.  After I picked the kids up at school (half a mile from home), my face got so cold it ached, and the kids were complaining about their ears falling off. I’m not inclined to start wearing a face mask, though. Things will warm up again later this week, and I can keep the lower half of my face warm under my scarf.

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Photo by Jeff Williams

Maddeningly, that’s where we left it.

I’m usually the one who’s trying to help people talk to each other. I’m likely to say “So what you’re saying is…”  And I think I’m pretty tolerant of people’s opinions most of the time. But I’ve got my hot buttons too, and this lady just hit too many of them.

It was at the Portland Plan meeting; a visioning and opinion-gathering meeting held by officials from the city of Portland and led by the mayor.  Part of the meeting involved small-group discussions, and one of the topics was transportation.

This lady led off with “Now, I own three bikes, but…” and proceeded to say that she doesn’t think the city should put a lot of time and money into bicycle improvements, that public transportation is unsafe, so she doesn’t use it, that cyclists should have to buy insurance like motorists do, that she’s simply going to drive her car wherever and whenever she wants because that’s what works for her and that’s what she wants to do, and that she doesn’t think the city should waste time and money making over the existing city into 20-minute neighborhoods (PDF). Because she thinks that’s not what people need.

Yeah. I started arguing with her when she got into the bike insurance, and the table facilitator had to make us stop. But I got to say my piece, and the facilitator wrote it all down.

I was still mad when I got home, and wrote a lot of very judgmental stuff refuting what the lady said at the meeting.  My husband had the sense to suggest I not post it immediately, and this morning I thought better of it, so I won’t subject you to my arguments.

If you’re in Portland, I do recommend attend a Portland Plan meeting if you can, though. I’ll be posting a recap of the meeting this weekend over on ParkroseGateway.com.