And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 13, 2019, brought to you by Holter Floral and Greenhouse, 205 Center Street West, Roseau, Minnesota 56751, ready for all your Valentine's Day needs. Get your order in by Wednesday night for a reduced delivery fee and to ensure your special someone will get a delivery! Fresh cut flowers, blooming plants, chocolates, balloons, teddy bears and much more! Like us at https://www.facebook.com/holterfloralandgifts/.
February 13 is the 44th day of the year, with 321 days remaining until the end of the year, 47 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,105 days until Twosday, February 22, 2022.
Nordhem Lunch: Hot Beef
Earth/Moon Almanac for February 13, 2019
Sunrise: 7:35am; Sunset: 5:40pm; 2 minutes, 21 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:41am; Moonset: 1:56am, waxing gibbous
Temperature Almanac for February 13, 2019
Average Record Today
High 13 40 17
Low -7 -46 2
February 13 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
February 13 is the 44th day of the year, with 321 days remaining until the end of the year, 47 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,105 days until Twosday, February 22, 2022.
Nordhem Lunch: Hot Beef
Earth/Moon Almanac for February 13, 2019
Sunrise: 7:35am; Sunset: 5:40pm; 2 minutes, 21 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:41am; Moonset: 1:56am, waxing gibbous
Temperature Almanac for February 13, 2019
Average Record Today
High 13 40 17
Low -7 -46 2
February 13 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
- National Break Up With Your Carrier Day
- National Tortellini Day
- National Cheddar Day
February 13 Riddle
What kind of cheese is made backwards?*
February 13 Pun
The little mermaid wears an algebra to math class. She wears seashells, because the A & B shells are too small.
February 13 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day
- 1633 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun.
- 1861 Abraham Lincoln declared US President.
- 1867 Johann Strauss' Blue Danube waltz premieres in Vienna
- 1862 Karel Weis, Czech composer.
- 1891 Grant Wood, American painter.
- 1923 Chuck Yeager, American test pilot.
Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
badling: a group of ducks.
barquentine: a sailing ship similar to a bark but square-rigged only on the foremast.
carrack: a large merchant ship of a kind operating in European waters in the 14th to the 17th century.
eldritch: adj. weird and sinister or ghostly.
jactance: boasting; vainglorious speaking.
plinth: a heavy base supporting a statue or vase.
pungitive: pricks or stings; sharp to the senses; keen, biting.
thaumaturgist: a performer of miracles especially : magician.
trireme: an ancient Greek or Roman war galley with three banks of oars.
February 13 Word-Wednesday Feature
It's never too soon to begin thinking of your spring garden, and what better way to spend a cold, snowy February. This week's Word-Wednesday features a list of gardening words to get you in the right frame of mind.
Acidic: Soil, compost, or liquid with a pH between 0 and 7.0 (on a scale of 0.0-14.0). Gardeners often refer to acidic soil as "sour". Tomatoes like their soil pH around 6.0 to 6.8.
Aeration: Loosening soil or compost to allow air to circulate around your tomato roots.
Alkaline: A soil with a pH between 7.0 and 14 (on a scale of 0.0-14.0). Some gardeners often refer to alkaline soil as "sweet", but not tomato growers.
Anaerobic: Describes organisms living or occurring where there is no oxygen, which does not help your tomatoes.
Annual: A plant that blooms, produces seed, and dies in one year, like a tomato plant in Wannaska.
Biennial: A plant that completes its full life-cycle in two growing seasons, producing leaves in the first season and flowers in the second.
Bolt: A plant (or gardener) that has gone to seed prematurely.
Bone Meal: Finely ground fertilizer composed of bone that adds phosphorus to the soil. Tomato plants thrive when grown in nutrient-rich, organic soils and need adequate phosphorus to produce quality fruit, but don't over do it.
Calcitic Limestone: A common calcium carbonate misture used for alkalinizing or “liming” soil that is too acidic.
Chelation: The formation of bonds between organic compounds and metals, some of which are insoluble, as in humus. Gardeners use soluble chelates in fertilizers to help keep nutrient metals, such as iron, mobile in the soil and thus available to plants rather than locked up in insoluble mineral salts.
Chlorosis: A yellowing or blanching of the leaves due to lack of chlorophyll, nutrient deficiencies or disease; in tomatoes frequently caused by a pesky virus.
Cold Frame: An unheated structure usually made of wood and covered with glass or plastic. Cold frames are used to protect plants from frost and are helpful season extenders; a prerequisite for most fall tomato growers in Wannaska.
Companion Planting: Sowing plants that help each other grow instead of competing against each other. Tomatoes like chives, marigolds, nasturtiums, basil, carrots, and peppers.
Damping Off: Decay of young seedlings at ground level following fungal attack. Often the result of soil borne diseases and over watering.
Dead Heading: Removing spent flowers or flowerheads for aesthetics, to prolong bloom for up to several weeks, or promote re-bloom, or to prevent seeding.
Deep Shade: Any plant requiring less than 2 hours of dappled sun a day.
Direct Seed: To seed directly into the soil instead of starting your seeds indoors.
Double Digging: A method of preparing the soil by digging a trench then putting the soil from one row into the next row.
Foliar Fertilizing: Feeding plants by applying liquid fertilizer directly to plant leaves.
Green Manure: A crop that is grown and then incorporated into the soil to increase soil fertility or organic matter content. Usually turned over into the soil a few weeks before new planting begins.
Hardening Off: The process of acclimatizing plants grown under protection, in the greenhouse for example, to cooler conditions outdoors.
Heavy Soil: A soil that contains a high proportion of clay and is poorly drained.
Humus: A fairly stable, complex group of nutrient-storing molecules created by microbes and other forces of decomposition by the conversion of organic matter, typically dark loamy earth.
Micronutrients: Some mineral elements are needed by plants in very small quantities, specifically: Iron, Manganese, Boron, Molybdenum, Zinc, Chlorine, Sodium, and Cobalt. If the tomatoes or lesser plants you are growing require specific trace elements and they are not getting them through the soil, they must be added.
Mulch: Any organic material, such as wood chips, grass clippings, compost, straw, or leaves that is spread over the soil surface to hold in moisture and help control weeds around your tomatoes.
No-Till-Gardening: Gardening method that calls for no cultivation of the soil after the initial tilling. Gardeners plant their tomatoes through mulch, saving on labor and eliminating weeding.
N-P-K: An abbreviation for the three main nutrients that have been identified as absolutely necessary for plants are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). These three are also known as “macronutrients,” and are the source of the three numbers commonly found on fertilizer labels.
Perennial: A plant that grows and flowers for years. They are either evergreens or may die back to the ground but will grow again the following season.
pH: A scale from 0-14 that explains the degree of acidity or alkalinity of the water or soil. Soil pH is very important because it affects the availability of nutrients to tomatoes and the activity of microorganisms in the soil.
Rhizome: A fleshy underground stem or runner. Creeping grasses spread by rhizomes. Think potato, not tomato.
Soil Amendment: Material added to the soil to improve its properties. This may include; water retention, permeability, water infiltration, drainage, aeration and structure. Soil amendments are mostly organic matter or very slow release minerals and are typically worked into the topsoil.
Soil Test: A measurement of the major nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) and pH levels in the soil.
Tilth: The condition of tilled soil, especially in respect to suitability for sowing seeds. Soil that is healthy and has good physical qualities is in good tilth.
Topdressing: Applying fertilizers or some kind of soil amendment after seeding, transplanting or once the crop has been established.
Vermicomposting: The use of red worms to convert food scraps or other organic materials into worm castings.
Worm Casting: The digested organic waste of red worms, the most nutrient dense organic compost available.
Xeriscaping: To create a low maintenance landscape with native plants and small or non-existent areas of turf grass. One of the primary goals of xeriscaping is to reduce landscape water use so that you can have really big tomatoes with less water.
Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow, and write when you have the time.
*Edam
Your blog today reminded me of two perennial tomato growers, now deceased, who once lived near Oklee, Minnesota, brothers named Bill and Carl Larson, and known across northern Minnesota as "The Larson Brothers" for their registered livestock of cows, pigs, and Belgian horses.
ReplyDeleteBill & Carl lived well into their nineties, one of their primary passions being tending a gigantic garden from which they would give away all its produce, keeping very little for themselves. I recall their tomato seedlings growing in many styrofoam or paper cups spread about in various window wells, edges of little used tables, and unused bedroom spaces of their old farmhouse beginning about now, for later planting in their garden.
After a lifetime of farming over 1000 acres in Red Lake County, for many of those years using draft horses, they eventually cut back and rented their land out to neighbors, but never skipped a year planting something of their own in their family garden that their mother had started in the late 1800s, supplanting her family with fresh grown vegetables and fruits from their orchard. Bill and Carl, even at 98 & 96, would haul their produce to public venues or roadside intersections and give away their garden crop at the close of every season, furtively declining purchases or donations. They became indignant if people would not allow them this service as they, as wise businessmen and lifetime bachelor farmers, didn't need money, as much as they needed to give back to the community., and tomatoes were a part of their bounty.
Gardening seems like a simple recreation to many; the Larson brothers saw it differently. Your story left me wondering.
DeleteI wonder how they passed the time between the fall harvest and when they pulled out the stack of styrofoam cups, dirt, and seeds in mid-February.
Even if Bill and Carl were twins, I wonder who was oldest, who died first, and what surviving Larson did after his brother was gone. I hope he kept planting tomatoes.
Nelson at Trafalgar
ReplyDeleteBefore you think me foolish or say I'm all jactance,
Listen to me kindly, how I made those Frenchmen dance.
We swept upon their carracks, their triremes ran away,
Our barquentines wreaked havoc, I thought I'd won the day.
But a sailor's fate is eldrich, his life may end a wreck,
For a sniper's ball most pungitive laid me upon the deck.
The crew cried to the surgeon, save our captain, we insist!
Old Bones said I'll do my best, but I'm no thaumaturgist.
Now back in old Trafalgar Square, you'll see me on a plinth.
I beg you keep the badlings off, or else I'll need a rinse.
Jactance: boasting
Carrack: generic ship
Trireme: another generic ship
Barquentine: one more bloody ship
Eldrich: strange
Pungitive: owie making
Thaumaturgist: magician
Plinth: pedestal
Badling: dirty biEd
Another masterpiece! Part of me felt bad for having so many bloodyship words, but now my conscience can rest.
ReplyDeleteBut I've got to go now. Sancho just barged into my study. The little skiff launched into a stream of barks until the bottom dropped out of his bucket. He ketched his breath and slooped away once, but now he's back. Canoe believe it? While I admire his craft, but I'd schooner listen to a yowling pack of catamarans that that repetitive little dinghy. It's "Ark, ark ark ark ark ark!" this, or "Yacht yacht yacht yacht yacht!" that.
I'll have to do a Word-Wednesday on animal words one of these weeks.