Burning Man

I'm back from Burning Man, a week-long art festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. There is so much to say about it, I hardly know where to start. Overall verdict: Amazing. I was so impressed by the scale and caliber of all the art, and the sheer effort of all participants to make an event like this happen. There are Ten Principles of the event, which gives a good insight into what the event stands for. Not only are the Principles on the website, but every participant sees them in the Survival Guide (required reading) when they get their ticket in the mail.

-Radical Inclusion- any one can be a part of the community
-Gifting- I've had people ask me about what I was planning to trade at Burning Man, but the idea is to give unconditionally with no expectation of a return or exchange
-Decommodification- the community is not mediated by corporate sponsorships or advertising
-Radical Self-Reliance- discover and exercise your inner resources
-Radical Self-Expression
-Communal Effort- creative cooperation and collaboration
-Civic Responsibility
-Leaving No Trace- respect for the environment, cleaning up after yourself, and leaving no physical trace of activities. Burning Man is the LARGEST Leave No Trace event in the WORLD! How cool is that?
-Participation- transformative change, whether in the individual or society, can only occur through personal participation. Every one is invited to work, play, and do. This speaks to the idea that there are no "spectators" at Burning Man.
-Immediacy

So what exactly does that all end up looking like? There are clearly 54,000 different experiences for every person there. With that many people for a week, Burning Man is more of an experience living in a city than just going to an event. It's like going to a city you've always wanted to visit, and discovering that you're a citizen, a homeowner, and can start any business you want. For that week, Black Rock City becomes the sixth largest city in Nevada, only to disappear without a trace. Here is an aerial view of the city from the side: (Photo by papertygre)

Here is a map from the Burning Man website of the city layout:

The open space in the middle is the Inner Playa, with the Man in the dead center. You can see four main radial points going out from the man to designate Noon, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock. Going up to 12 o'clock from the Man into Deep Playa is the Temple, and down to 6 is Center Camp. The inner ring street is the Esplanade, and each circular street out is named by letter- A, B, C, D. This year, since the theme was Fertility 2.0, the street names were after flowers- Alyssum, Begonia, Columbine, Dandelion, etc. As the event has grown, so has the number of circular roads out, up to L (Lilac) this year.

The man is visible from pretty much everywhere in the city. He is around 30 feet tall on a 40-foot platform, and gets lit up for the night at dusk. You can always stay fairly oriented as to your location as long as you can see the man.

Matt and I were fortunate enough to get Early Arrival passes, both to help our theme camp set up and to attempt to avoid the crazy long lines of tens of thousands of people arriving on the same day. The camp mates who had arrived earlier had already gotten a ton done, but our whole first day we basically got settled in, setting up our tent area, plus helping with erecting and decorating the camp dome, fence, and art car. Here is the front of our camp, lucky enough to be assigned a spot right on the Esplanade.

Each day was totally different and fairly unpredictable- Who would you meet? What would the weather be like? How would you feel? The things that always remained the same though were that there is always so much to do and see. There is big art, but also just the time and care that goes into costumes and decorating bicycles is incredible. Here is an approximate "day in the life" of what a typical (if a bit full) day was like for me at Burning Man...

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Some mornings I sleep in until 8 or 9, but today I wake up early around 6. Matt is already dressed and leaving, wanting to be outside to take photos in the dawn light and sunrise. I leave camp a bit before 7 to ride my bike to the Man and meet a running group. There is a thick little booklet with a schedule of events, and it said that people met every day at 7am to run the perimeter of the event. Luckily I find them, from a guy who hadn't slept yet to a girl who is here on her honeymoon to another guy who is planning to run a 50K race at Burning Man the next day. We run nine miles around the fence in the cool of the morning, from deep playa to the airport to the entrance around the camps and back. 

This might be the best time of day in Black Rock City. Plenty of people are still up from dancing all night, and art buses are still pumping music. There is a lingering energy but a new freshness as the sun casts a golden light and before it gets too hot.

I ride back to my camp and Matt has also returned from shooting. We sit down to breakfast where other camp mates are already making bacon, pancakes, and coffee. At 10 a bunch of classes are starting, like Pirate Yoga, Hula-Hoop making, and Aerial Silks. I opt for silks because it's the closest and I want to learn more. The class is helpful and I see some beautiful performances by aerialists from all over the west coast. After, I start to ride back to camp, slowly on the dusty bumpy side roads, and some guys call out asking if I want peanut M&M's. So I stop and join them on their inflatable furniture under a shade tarp and we start chatting. They are Germans and New Yorkers, and we proceed to have a great conversation about everything from speed limits for fuel conservation to Gangnam Style. Back at camp Matt and I have lunch- sandwiches and fruit and pickles. I find that I really crave kimchi and pickles on the playa. I think I need the salt from sweating so much, and the acidic vinegar after all the alkaline desert dust. I'm feeling a little tired from the active morning, so we stretch and doze in the almost-too-hot tent. We also do some self-care: baby-wipe bath, lots of lotion on our dry skin, neti pot for sinuses, and hydration drinks.

By this time of day it's in the 90's and though it's a dry heat, feels relentless. I am refreshed though, and make sure my camelback is packed with the essentials- water, sunscreen, desert goggles, handkerchief, my own mug, travel-size baby-wipes, sunscreen lip balm, pocket knife, tissues, event schedule booklet, pen, ID (yes the bars are supposed to card), a tiny bit of cash, and MOOP ziplock bag. (MOOP is Matter Out Of Place, and means any trash on the desert floor or anything that is leaving a trace and shouldn't be there.) I never venture out of camp without these items. 

Matt and I jump on our bikes ready to go exploring. If we wanted to read the schedule, we could go to salsa class, a banjo performance, a French cafe, a bellydance flash mob, a mojito bar, a water slide, a literary discussion, a critical mass bike ride, an udon noodle stand, or a foot wash day spa. For now I'm thinking about finding some iced coffee and not making too many other plans. 

We go across town to where there is supposed to be Vietnamese iced coffee, but there is no one there. Of course, with never a shortage of things happening at Burning Man, there happens to be a camp right across the street giving away root beer floats. The cold ice cream is such a treat. As we sit there, the Nevada State Health Department is inspecting the food-service operation. Yes, camps serving food still have to abide by state health regulations as we are in an actual city, and I saw camps being inspected more than once. We still want coffee though, so we stop by the cafe at Center Camp, one of the very few places at Burning Man where money is exchanged. I like Center Camp a lot- it's like the community living room. Shaded but with open walls, there are benches and chairs to hang out on, people doing massage, practicing acrobalance, performing on the small stage, filling out the census, napping, and looking at art displays.

After the caffeine fix, we ride down the Esplanade to a huge tower I've been wanting to go up. It's at least 50 feet tall and has great views of the city.

Then we ride out into the open playa to look at art. As the week goes on, more pieces get put up and finished, so there are always new things to see.

There is anything from sculptures to look at...

...to huge, life-size art pieces you can interact with, like this incredibly realistic shipwreck, complete with dock, dinghies, and hammocks...

 ... to tons of art cars driving around. Once you arrive at Burning Man, you are not allowed to drive your car until you leave, so the only motorized vehicle are approved art cars and emergency/service vehicles.

 Just as we getting way out into Deep Playa and feeling really hot, tired, and dusty, we find an oasis.

We rest for a while on the couches in the shade of "trees", drink water, chat with other people. We need to get back to camp to help with a camp Happy Hour, plus the dust is kicking up. Usually in the hottest hours of the day, there would be little dust storms. You definitely need goggles and some kind of mask, but there was only twice when they were more than minor inconveniences.

Just as many other camps offer services, entertainment, food, and/or drinks, our camp also planned on hosting something. Today we are doing a Happy Hour, offering a swamp-cooler-cooled dome space, DJ, open bar, and homemade salsa with chips. I help to bring in passers-by off the Esplanade and dance in the dome.

The party is winding down at dusk, and neither Matt or I can resist the light. We hop on our bikes to take a quick ride to the Temple and the Man in the fading light.

The Man is the focal point of the city, and the temple is a beautiful, sacred space. It's hard to imagine that in a few days the man will be burnt to the ground, and that the temple will have the same fate the night after. But for now, we enjoy their short and sweet existence.

Back at camp it's dark and tonight's meal team has already gotten dinner ready. Most of the dinners were made before Burning Man, vacuum-sealed, frozen, and kept in the cooler so that the meals only need to be reheated. With so much happening during the days and the limited water for dish washing, it's really nice to eat good food but not actually have to cook on the playa. Plus, there are about 65 people in our camp sharing meals, so that would be a lot of cooking even in a non-desert setting!! Tomorrow it will be our turn to feed the clan the gallons of chili we made, but for tonight I'm very grateful for some one else's work- pasta bolognese.

After dinner we help make sure the kitchen is clean, make a cocktail, and straighten up the tent a bit. We change into evening clothes (jackets, pants) because it can definitely get cold out there. We trade out our shade desert goggles for clear night-time goggles. We refill our camelback and make sure we have a MOOP bag. We light ourselves and our bikes with headlamps, blinky lights, and glow sticks. It's very dark at night in the middle of the desert, and with all the art cars and bikes it's important for safety to be well-lit at night.

At night it's like a whole new city. Art cars that weren't that spectacular during the day look amazing with their lighting. Or they are designed to spout fire which is also more interesting in the dark.

There are fire dancers, art cars blasting music, music camps with big DJs, and countless small projects and performances to interact with. There are tons of mobile bars and camp bars giving out drinks. Imagine the best nightlife you've seen on a single street, then multiply that by a whole city.

We dance a little and see a bunch of cool sights, but eventually I get tired. It's been a great day, but a long, active, dusty, hot one, and I want to be rested for whatever I find to do tomorrow. We head back to camp while everything is still in full swing. In a way I feel like I'm missing out, but really I'm still in the thick of it as the music will blare all around me until 6am, and I can listen until I fall asleep on my thermarest.

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This is a great Aerial Video with good visuals of what the different parts of the city look like. This video Oh, the Places You'll Go is from 2011 and its popularity increased the awareness of Burning Man in the mainstream more than ever. For amazing photos, check out Scott London's 2012 Burning Man photos.

August So Far

August has been a busy month. And you know what? A hot one too. It really felt like summer! It's only in the last couple days that the clouds have come back and the evenings gotten a chill. Here's a rundown of what I've been doing.

- Garden Harvest: I've been eating kale for months, but finally started getting other veggies like potatoes, squash, beets, and the first few cherry tomatoes!

Then I thought, "Could I make a well-rounded meal using food entirely from the backyard?" So I put together this dinner using our chicken eggs, beets, beet greens, onions, garlic, thyme, rosemary, mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and cucumber. It was the first time I had ever made or eaten such a local meal, all raised about 30 feet from where I sleep.

- I've been doing a lot of other summery cooking and eating. When blueberries came on I went U-picking because I love to freeze them. I've been throwing blueberries into smoothies (usually with yogurt, banana, and peanut butter) and also discovered this phenomenal Lemon Blueberry Buckle.

Before blueberries when there was cherry madness, I made this Cherry Salsa. It was a totally new idea to me, to add onions, cilantro, mint, jalapenos, and lime to make an actual salsa. It is delicious! I ate a bunch just with corn chips, and froze the rest to use as a sauce on pork or chicken. 

- I went to a Pie Party/Competition. It is such an epic event that the couple only holds it every two years at their house on Eastlake. The categories are for Most Delicious Pie, Prettiest Pie, and Best Art Pie.

My boyfriend, who took me to the party, said, "Amber, you're a good baker, but every one brings such amazing pies that another good pie will just get lost in the shuffle. If we want to stand out, we need to do an art pie, a conceptual piece."

His idea was to do a "honey pie" featuring live bees! I told him we could use my bees, only if they were well-treated, meaning: contained but have enough air flow, have access to eating sugar water, and be returned to the hive a couple hours later. I baked a real pie shells and the we filled it with comb from a friend's hive, honey, sugar water, and flowers, collaborating with another friend.

I took a frame out of the hive and gently brushed the bees onto the pie, then covered it with a glass lid that was slightly propped-up for air circulation. Voilà! Our honey pie was complete with bees buzzing under the glass, and we very carefully drove to the party.

There were so many pies it was overwhelming. The many pies were divided up by category, and left untouched for only the judges to try while the rest of the guests ate the catered dinner and planned which ones to have for dessert.

Some of the ones that caught my eye: Rum Benedictine Blackberry Cheese Pie, Yin and Yang Peanut Butter, Smoked Salted Carmel Pecan, Kentucky Bourbon Chocolate Walnut, and a cousin of pie, a Peach Oregano Manchego Galette. One of my favorites was Bourbon Cherry Fernet Cheese Pie. What?! So good.

As if all the pie eating wasn't reward enough, our Honey Pie won first place in the Art Pie category! Apparently my bees did a great job looking all bee-ish, buzzing around in the glass cake lid, expertly clinging to the side. I'm convinced it's their performance that made us win. I got them home after their wild evening out of the hive in time to tell stories to the others and explain to the queen why they shirked their work for the day.

- Speaking of bees, I added the 4th box (or hive body) to the hive a few weeks ago. Here's what the hive looks like now.

I also took a beekeeping class on how to harvest honey and how to winterize the hive now that colder weather is just around the corner. Did I mention that I am learning everything about beekeeping as I go? I had no idea how to harvest the honey. I didn't even know how to calculate how much honey they've made! Basically, you have to figure out how much honey they've made, how much they need to survive the winter, and then you can take whatever the surplus is.

 Here's what I do know: There are some good-looking frames inside here! Here's a frame that is partially full- the covered or "capped" comb cells are full of honey, and the open ones are where the bees are still working.

Here's what a frame looks like when it is completely full of honey. It's heavy too! I have about 5 of these frames total.

Now is the ideal time to harvest honey, but I just don't have time right now. The last couple weeks have been pretty hectic getting ready for Burning Man, so I am just going to think about any honey harvest when I get home.

-Burning Man! When I decided to go in July, it pretty much changed the face of my summer. Suddenly, there was a ton to do to get ready, and I was always preparing in different ways. It's never ending. It's sort of like having a homework assignment that you feel like you are always procrastinating on, because you are never really finished until you finally go to the event.

"Why is there so much to do?" you may ask. First of all there's the packing- costumes, desert goggles, proper tent (or RV?), shade structures, mountain bike, costumes. Here's Matt's packing list (the abridged version!) which we combed through several times. Then there's the helping with your theme camp- camp work parties, meetings, emails to read and respond to, more work parties, cooking meals in advance (Matt and I made 9 gallons of chili one day that we then vacuum sealed and froze), and the final truck load for the transportation team that leaves first. Also there is figuring out all the logistics- How to get down there, how much time to take off work, and just a ton of reading online. I'm finally feeling ready, which is good because we leave tomorrow! I just have a few sewing projects to finish in the car.

Friends at Ross, Alone at Desolation

My friend Katie's family has taken their yearly family vacation at Ross Lake Resort for over 30 years. Ross Lake is a 20-mile long lake off Highway 20, with Diablo Dam at its south end and the North Cascades National Park surrounding it everywhere else. The resort is a row of floating cabins only accessible by boat or hiking over a mile from the parking lot. The family spends a week hanging out with friends, fishing, hiking, swimming, playing games, and cooking lottttssss of food. Last year I was lucky enough to be invited to join and definitely didn't want to miss it this year.

Last year was also when I learned that Ross Lake was where the trailhead was for Desolation Peak. Desolation has one of western Washington's many historic fire lookouts, but was made famous when Jack Kerouac stayed there as the lookout in the summer of 1956 and went on to write about it in his book Desolation Angels. As a Kerouac fan in high school, I had vowed to someday go there.

My "someday" finally came! I arrived at the lake resort in the early evening, with enough time to catch up with every one, eat a delicious dinner, and enjoy the fading light from in front of Katie and Alan's cabin. Here you can see the wooden skiff that the resort rents to guests, plus the dam and the beautiful peaks in the distance.

The next morning was warm and clear. We swam, drank rounds of coffee, ate berry pancakes, and indulged in the guilty of pleasure of celebrity gossip magazines. (Katie Holmes had just left Tom Cruise, it was big news!) My friends had already been to Desolation Peak, so it turned out that I was going to be going up alone. I didn't want to hike on an exposed trail in hottest part of the day, so we decided that I would hike up in the afternoon/evening, set up camp, and come back the next day. They were kind enough to take me up the lake to the trailhead, which is quite a ways (nearly an hour) from the resort. If you charter a boat I think they charge you $100, so I was incredibly grateful for the boat ride.

We took our time getting up the lake, taking side trips up a little river mouth with narrow canyon walls, and to a swim spot where we could watch fish and jump off small cliffs.

We pulled up to the trailhead a little after 4, which was nothing more than this small dock in the expanse of forest. I put on my heavy backpack and agreed on a time for them to pick me up the next day.

The hike up was beautiful. It was forested a lot of the way, but then I would come out of the trees to see Ross Lake getting smaller down below, and numerous peaks of the Cascades poking out all around in the muted evening light. It was also really hard. It's been a long time since I've backpacked alone, and I had forgotten just how much weight it adds to not have multiple people carrying group gear such as the tent, stove, cooking pots, and water filter. Also, I had a required bear canister which was incredibly heavy.

I don't really mind backpacking alone... in fact, I think it's really good for the soul once in a while. And it felt freeing to have so much wild space around me, and know that I was the only person on the mountain. I had to get a permit at the ranger station in Marblemount to camp at the campsite just below the peak, and there is only one site. The permit is first-come-first-serve and I was lucky enough to get it, so I knew for sure that there was no one else camping there that night.

There was only one moment when I felt a little scared. I was on the way up, and passed a tree that looked like a Ponderosa Pine. "Wow!" I thought, "Is it really a Ponderosa? That would be weird to see one on the west side of the Cascades." I walked up to inspect the bark more closely, looking so intently at the colors that it took me a second to notice the HUGE BEAR CLAW MARKS on the trunk. My heart started pounding but I reminded myself that I've never seen a bear in the wild and probably wouldn't today. I did start singing though since I had no one to talk to and making noise I'd be less likely to catch a bear unawares.

I made it to the campsite which was a gorgeous spot with a view, two tent pads, a pit toilet, and a separate cooking area. I made dinner in the little kitchen area and then called it a night.

The next morning I woke up to crazy fog. Like, only about 15 feet of visibility. I was so bummed at the thought of not having a view from the top. I did some reading in the tent and made breakfast, and by then the fog was burning off a bit. I left all my gear at camp except for a day pack, and headed off to hike the last mile or so up to the peak. The morning suddenly got really hot, and mostly cleared up except for some flat layers of clouds.

In Desolation Angels, Kerouac talks a lot about Hozomeen mountain...

"Hozomeen, Hozomeen, most beautiful mountain I've ever seen, like a tiger sometimes with stripes, sunwashed rills and shadow crags wriggling lines in the Bright Daylight, vertical furrows and bumps and Boo! crevasses, boom, sheer magnificent Prudential mountain, nobody's even heard of it, and it's only 8,000 feet high, but what a horror when I first saw that void the first night of my staying on Desolation Peak waking up from deep fogs of 20 hours to a starlit night suddenly loomed by Hozomeen with his two sharp points, right in my window black..."

It was epic, jutting out of the clouds like something out of Lord of the Rings, not resembling other peaks around Ross Lake. I'm so so happy I got a view of it. Here's the fire lookout, with Hozomeen in the background.

I hung out on the peak for awhile, enjoying the serenity and solitude. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I knew if I wasn't back to the dock on time, Katie and Alan would worry. I headed down the mountain and got back to the dock with minutes to spare. The timing worked out great and I'm really glad they didn't have to wait on me at all. They had brought snacks and cold beers and we chatted about the past day. Did I mention how awesome those two are?

Back at the resort we started an "experimental happy hour" in which we amassed all our various liquors and mixers, and the proceeded to try brand new cocktails. The only rule was you weren't allowed to mix a drink you had ever had before. Some terrible and brilliant concoctions were born, and either way it's a game that comes highly recommended.

Then there was dinner, a dance party, hula hooping, and a fairly early night to bed. I left the next day, very happy to have a vacation with both time alone and time with such wonderful people.

Mount Adams

On Thursday and Friday before leaving, I told some people I was going to climb Mount Adams that weekend. "Oh... Where's that?" was the most common reply. Which is crazy because at 12,281 feet, it is the state's second highest mountain, after the much more famous Mount Rainier. I realized that unlike Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, and Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams is not visible from the highway so many Washingtonians have no idea where it is. In fact, the only times I've ever seen it have been from the air, before landing at Sea-Tac airport on a clear day.

Yes, it is wayyy down there, almost to Portland and much farther east. Even driving there is tricky, because the shortest route is on backroads, even down to unpaved forest service roads. If you want to stick to the faster freeway route you can go to Oregon and Hood River, but that adds 100 miles. 

Matt and I opted for shorter, slower, and scenic. We left after work on Friday, and after getting through city traffic, stopping for dinner, and driving on wash-boarded back-roads in the fog, we didn't reach our Trout Lake hotel until after 10:30pm. We repacked our bags for the hike the following day and went to bed around midnight.

We had originally planned to do the climb as a 2-day backpack- arrive Saturday, hike up about 3,000 feet to a campsite, stay the night, summit on Sunday, then hike out. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Sunday was looking pretty bad, so we decided to do the whole hike in on Saturday. We woke up at 5am Saturday morning, got permits, and drove to the trailhead. As we passed this view of the mountain, I couldn't help but be amazed that it was actually possible to climb in one day. Really?! We are going to be on top of that?!

We did the South climb from the Cold Springs trailhead which starts at 5,600 feet. There was no snow on the trail for the first 15 minutes or so, and then we came out of the trees onto snow into bright sunlight and a clear morning. The idea was to ascend about 6,600 vertical feet to reach the summit- the most elevation gain of any day hike I've ever done.  I was determined to not make the same mistake I made last time I hiked on a snow field to Camp Muir- sunburning my ears. I slathered them with sunscreen AND covered them with a bandana. (Fool me twice, shame on me!)

Slowly but surely we pushed upward, checking the altimeter as we shaved thousands of feet off the hike. We thought we might need crampons, but the snow was so soft that they weren't necessary. It was a beautiful day and we had sweeping views of Mount Hood, Mount Saint Helens, foothills, and the dry expanse of eastern Oregon. There were great campsites along the way, on exposed soil nestled between rocks.

After the Lunch Counter camping area at about 9,500 feet is when the trail started getting really steep. And it was over 10,000 feet that I started to feel the altitude. It was a slow, sometimes meditative, sometimes discouraging tromp up. At that point you see what looks like the summit, but it's actually a false summit. We finally reached the false summit around 3pm and stopped to rest on some rocks. A lot of other people were hanging out there, some on there way up, some on their way down. We could see the real summit, over a mile away and about 700 more vertical feet.

Unfortunately, it was already sort of late in the day. We were tired, and we figured that by the time we made it to the summit and back down, we wouldn't get off the trail til after 9. I really really really wanted to reach the top, but the smarter decision was to listen to our bodies and limited daylight. It was still a phenomenal hike and I would just have to come back someday, either climbing it as a backpack, or camping at the trailhead and waking up much earlier. For now I was just happy to enjoy the amazing glissade back down. Where it was really steep there were fast, established runs and of course stellar views.

I had brought a large black plastic garbage bag and made myself a glissade diaper, partly to protect my pants and partly to go faster. In some sections it wasn't steep enough to glissade, but for the most part it was a quick and and absolutely giddy slide down the mountain.

It still takes effort to get back down though- to pick a good chute, maneuver curves, hold your feet up. Sometimes when I got going too fast I used my ice axe as a brake, and sometimes when I was going slow I used it as a paddle to push myself. Unfortunately, at one point I didn't make a wide enough arch with the axe and ended up stabbing myself in the leg. It tore my pants but it didn't hurt that bad and I didn't think much of it. 

We made it off the mountain tired but very happy, and the next day had a mellow day exploring the area. The mountain mingles with the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which has tons of great hikes, lakes, waterfalls, lava formations, ice caves, and huckleberries. The berries were just getting ripe and you can find different varieties in the same patch of forest! It was a great weekend and I even had an ice axe souvenir to take home with me.

Harvest and a Quote

I came across this quote on my friend Lydia's blog today and it really struck a chord in me.


“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree, and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

From The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

In other news, I finally got around to thinning the carrots and beets in my garden yesterday, and was happy to see the pretty rainbow carrots doing well. I got a bunch of beet greens, which is as much my draw for growing beets as the root, and we just finished off the last of the garlic scapes. I'm trying to plan and plant for my fall/overwintering beds, and as always, I wish I had more time to spend in the garden. Now it's a sunny morning, and I just fertilized everything and gave it a good water, and am loading up the car to head to Ross Lake for rest of the week. Excited to see how things have grown when I get back!