Life

Spring is a season of renewal, and while the environmental changes aren't as big here as I'm used to up north, I'm trying to appreciate the subtlety. I thought this would be a good time for a "garden" update!

I had originally planned to plant more, but since I'm moving back to MN this summer (thanks to your help at my Indiegogo campaign!) I'm keeping it simple. Jordan will have to take over when I leave.

The strawberries and rosemary I planted back in December are doing well. You may recall I initially had some trouble with the strawberries.

Freshly planted

A few weeks later

I picked off all the browning leaves and checked on them frequently. I also brought them inside on the rare night the outdoor temperature dropped below 40. They were pretty small with all their big leaves gone, and I thought maybe they were suffering from a nutrient deficiency. Either that, or they were just shedding old leaves for winter. I'm leaning toward the latter. Having never grown anything in this climate before, I didn't know what to expect.

Today

I still get a dead leaf here and there, but for the most part they're doing great! I've been pinching the flowers off the little one (it's so painful!) so it can recover a bit more, but I'm letting the big one produce. It gave me one weird looking berry with a brown spot a few weeks ago, and I thought maybe it was because it was touching the dirt. I put down a layer of aspen shavings and that seems to be working well!

Tiny but tasty!

I should have clipped the flowers on the large plant too, but I was impatient. It has a few larger berries growing now, though I know it would help the roots establish better if it didn't have to focus on producing fruit. I'm a harsh mistress.

Our Sassy rosemary plant is doing well too. I didn't realize how much it had grown until I looked at this old picture!

Freshly planted

Today

Huge! The plant hasn't been entirely problem-free though. I had an issue with white mildew a couple months ago, likely due to over-watering. I took the plant inside and physically washed each affected leaf to get rid of it, and then I sprayed it with a watered down milk solution on a sunny day. Apparently milk can act as a fungicide when hit with sunlight. It's doing much better now, though I may have let it go a little too long without water as some of its leaves got a little crispy. I cleaned it up and gave it a good soak before I took that last photo. (If you click the picture and make it big, you can check out a lady's super long colorful hair.)

A couple months ago I brought garbage down to the dumpster to discover someone had left a whole bunch of  used plant pots and planters there, mostly terra cotta. Jordan accompanied me and we picked out a few.

Free pots!

About six weeks ago I decided to add another little something to our balcony. Our onions got a little old and one of them had a nice healthy sprout, so I did a little Googling to find out if it was possible to plant it. According to what I found, it's possible to replant and eat the same onion. I followed the instructions and stripped off the onion layers until I was left with just the stem and roots, and planted it in one of the nicer pots we found. 

I don't know if I'll actually get an onion, but it's doing well and growing like crazy! There appear to be two stalks. Does that mean I could get a double onion? I know so little about this, but I'm learning!

A couple weeks after I planted that one I had another onion sprout, but rather than plant it right away I stripped it down and set its roots in water. I changed the water daily for almost a week because I didn't make time to plant it. I think it got a little shocked going from water to soil, and it's not doing so well.

After taking this photo I moved the plant off the grill, just in case the sun has been heating up the metal too much. I don't want to cook the onion until after harvest! Maybe if I keep watering it it'll perk back up.

I can't wait to do more gardening in the future. The best way to learn something is to do it!

I have a brown thumb

I've researched it a bit, but I still can't figure out why my strawberries are turning brown. Is it just because it's winter? I know nothing about growing things in SoCal. I brought the plants in on a couple uncharacteristically cold nights (below 40 degrees) but they may have seen a few nights in the 40s. 

I'm determined to turn my brown thumb into a green one. I'm going to need to if I want a successful garden, and I know I have a lot of research ahead of me. Should I remove the leaves that have turned brown in order to encourage the new growth?  Strawberries are supposed to be easy, and I've grown them without problems in MN. Not sure what I'm missing here.

At least Sassy's rosemary plant is doing well!

Berry Obsession

I used to say I could live on berries and beef jerky.

I don't think I ever believed that was true, but they are still two of my favorite foods. Venison jerky is pretty great too, but this blog post is all about the berries.

I spent a good portion of my childhood in berry patches. During northern Minnesota summers berries grow wild everywhere. Strawberries are the first to ripen, followed by raspberries and blueberries later. Those three are the most well known, but there are also wild currants, gooseberries, dewberries, and thimble berries (and juneberries, and pin cherries...). It's a very "fruitful" state!

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house while I was growing up, which is where my parents live now. It's a small house with a big yard just a few miles outside Grand Marais. They had an upper and lower garden full of tame raspberry bushes that grew berries the size of quarters. There are still a few bushes there, though it has overgrown. I took this photo last summer.

There was also a big, beautiful tame gooseberry bush - which may be my favorite berry, if I had to choose. A gooseberry is difficult to describe to someone who doesn't know what they are, but they're delicious, almost like a sweet grape without any bitterness. They start out green and sour, but tame ones get big and purple-red when ripe (wild ones are smaller and dark purple). 

Not my pic, I Googled it.

Unfortunately my dad destroyed the gooseberry bush and most of the raspberry garden to make space to put a garage. I was pretty bummed about it for a while, but I don't hold it against him. The memory only fuels my desire to recreate the glorious bush in my own yard someday. 

My folks owned a trailer court, cabins, and campground while I was growing up. We had wild strawberries growing in our front yard and wild raspberry bushes around the campground and by the frog pond on state land next door. Back behind the trailer court a road led to a couple more properties until it finally ended at state forest land - and the berry hill.

Many times each summer I would hike up to the berry hill. Strawberries and raspberries were everywhere. I would pack up a lunch, usually a sandwich and a Surge, and enjoy my fill of berries. Sometimes I would bring a container full home, but mostly I just ate them like a hungry, greedy bear. Once in a while my mom would come along and we'd pick berries to make jam.

The first plants I tried growing in a garden were strawberries. I had a little raised bed next to the pump house that supplied well water to the campground. I weeded them and took care of them for a couple years, but over time I lost interest and weeds took over. The berries they gave me were wonderful, though. There's nothing like the taste of sun-ripened fruit you've grown yourself. 

These memories and many more like them are the driving force behind my goals and dreams for my future homestead. I'm going to have a berry farm. These two strawberry plants growing on my balcony are the beginning of that dream.

I like the idea of having a "pick your own" style berry farm, or at the very least have enough plants that I can bring berries to the farmer's market each week. I will have the traditional strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, but also gooseberries and currants. Berries will be my primary focus because they're what I know and love most. I'm starting small and dreaming big.

Someday I'm going to be sitting outside my home, admiring my berry garden and chewing on some venison jerky from a deer I shot myself. I'll look back on this blog post with a smile. To that future me, I say congratulations! I knew you could do it. 

Endings Lead to New Beginnings - A Rat Story

I have never known life without pets.

My living space has always been filled with a menagerie of critters since I was very young. I had your standard cats and dogs, but at different times I've also kept rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, fish, bugs, tadpoles, frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, and rats. 

Rats are still considered unconventional pets by some, and feared by others. It's interesting to me how some people think hamsters are adorable, but find rats disgusting. Is it the long scaly tail? Their (wrongful) association with disease? Stigmas aside, the truth is rats make wonderful pets, and there are even dedicated rat shows the same way there are dog and cat shows - they have quite a following.

They're also a lot like us. They're omnivorous so they can share in almost any food we eat (even small amounts of chocolate). They need the company of other rats to thrive and will sleep together and groom each other in a social hierarchy that's fascinating to watch.

They're also adorable.

My boyfriend Jordan hasn't had many pets in his life, mainly due to allergies and asthma. When I moved in with him he came to terms with the fact he would be living with a cat when we move back to MN - I'm pretty sure I can't live long without one, and I left my kitty Willow back in MN with my parents temporarily. He decided it was a good time to get back on his medication.

I moved in with Jordan during April 2013, and while I had my snakes (they're a pet for a different blog entry) and a beta fish, I was feeling a void that needed to be filled by something cute and fuzzy. I brought up the idea of a small animal pet and suggested we get a couple rats. I was mildly surprised when he said yes. He didn't know then what an impact these little critters can have, but he does now.

I looked up a local breeder and soon we were the proud owners of two baby dumbo rats. Jordan named his blue and white variegated "Sassy," and I named my black Berkshire "Raven." The term "dumbo" refers to their lower, larger ears - a genetic trait some pet rats carry.

See? Adorable!

We bonded deeply with the rats, but Jordan especially so since this was the first time in a long while he had a pet he could call his own. We were also battling depression, and the love exchanged between rat and human was a rare thing that could dissolve the worst of bad days. 

However, it wasn't long before we noticed there was something different about Sassy. She seemed like she was developing more slowly. Raven would bound and hop and run, and Sassy would slowly walk or crawl, always a couple steps behind. As she got older her conditioned worsened, and soon she wasn't able to walk straight. She acted as though she were drunk, falling forward or to the side while trying to walk the line. Still, she was able to function normally otherwise, and we affectionately nicknamed her "Wobbles."

We weren't sure what was causing her condition. The breeder offered that since she had a cold when she was a baby, she may have never fully recovered from an ear infection, and that could be causing the wobble. When one of her eyes began to bulge however, we figured the likely culprit was a pituitary tumor. 

Months passed and there seemed to be no change for better or worse. Sassy wobbled about and doted on Raven. Since Raven was stronger and faster, she quickly established herself as queen of the cage and would steal food from her handicapped sister. Sassy never seemed to mind.

One day in PetCo, Jordan and I came across a deal we couldn't pass up - a rat manor cage, usually running near $100, was on sale for $20. This was a high quality cage with a full metal bottom, and it was staring at us for a fraction of what even a used one would cost. We took the upgrade home, and the rats loved it.

Of course with more space, it wasn't long before we decided to add to our rat family. We picked out two new female rat babies from a different local breeder and named them Misty and Poe.

More adorable!

I kick myself for not doing a longer quarantine period. After introductions were made and all four rats were in the rat manor, everyone came down with the sniffles. Respiratory infections in rats are very common and most rats carry the virus, with flare ups happening from time to time. Everyone got over the illness, but it left Sassy with a severely bulging eye that had begun to bleed. She showed signs of pain - swaying and staring at a corner of the cage, away from other rats. We brought her to a vet who confirmed our suspicions - a brain tumor was the likely culprit. During the examination her eye started bleeding again, and we talked about putting her down.

Having very little money at the time (barely enough for the vet visit), Jordan had researched humane at-home euthanasia methods and felt confident in his ability to provide a comfortable passing if it ever became necessary. We brought her home, and we were so glad we did.

After the vet visit, Sassy showed remarkable signs of improvement. Her eye shrunk down to half its normal size and the tissue looked healthy. She no longer showed signs of pain and began sleeping with the other rats again. I was in awe. What an incredible, inspiring creature she was!

Jordan and Sassy

Another few months went by without incident. As Poe got bigger, she started squabbling with Raven for dominance. Misty and Sassy were always sweet. 

About a month ago Sassy developed another respiratory infection and we treated her with antibiotics, which we mixed into a tasty food that she would readily lick off of a spoon. It seemed like the illness had run its course, but soon it was back with a vengeance and we continued treatment. She was very thin, and her good eye had started to bulge. I knew what was coming.

Last week her breathing had become more labored. On Friday she was barely able to lick the spoon to take her medicine. She wanted nothing more than to be held, and Jordan and I took turns letting her sleep in our arms. When we tried to place her in the cage, she used every bit of her strength to scramble back to the cage door and into our hands again. 

At close to 2 AM, I placed her into one of her favorite boxes in the cage, and whispered goodbye. She never left the box.

It was a sad morning, though we were also relieved. Sassy was no longer struggling. Jordan and I discussed what to do with her body. We decided months earlier that we would not be feeding any of our pet rats to the snakes. I suggested burying her somewhere around the apartment complex, maybe in between some plants that aren't likely to be landscaped any time soon. He favored the idea of burying her in a pot as he'd read about on some FB rat groups, and after some thought I agreed.

I've wanted to start an outdoor potted garden for a while in preparation for this whole homesteading idea (have to start somewhere, right?). We decided a rosemary bush would be fitting, and I picked up a couple strawberry plants as well. 

After the burial Jordan lit a candle and we said a few words. Later we made a little tombstone and placed it in front of the rosemary. Jordan originally wrote the letters in Sharpie, and then I went over them with white acrylic paint. After spraying the stone with a matte finishing spray, the letters turned purple. 

Sassy Plant

Sassy will continue to live on as this rosemary grows. It's a fitting, poetic statement about the cycle of death and rebirth, and we will likely continue this tradition as we face the inevitable pet deaths to come (that's the biggest drawback to rats - even the healthiest rarely live past age three). 

Sassy's death allowed for the beginning of my homesteading project, and everything we use this rosemary for in the future will have Sassy's memory attached. 

Thanks, little girl. You were a wonderful wobbly rat, and I'll miss you.