Scientific Ink

Category: Ann Arbor

  • Nothing like excavation to bring a family together

    Dave’s dad likes ponds. He put a pond in the backyard of the house where Dave grew up.

    We got a small man-made pond when we bought our house. It was at the edge of a slate patio in the back yard, ringed with a kind of perplexing boxwood hedge that blocks the view of the pond from the house. The pond is a graceful figure eight shape. It has aqua concrete walls, cracked now. It was lined with black plastic, held at the edges with loosely placed (unstable) slate tiles.

    The pond was the project Dave spent the winter planning. In the early spring, Dave pulled up the black pond liner, finding several garter snakes nestled into the cracks in the cement underneath the liner. We suppose they overwintered there…!

    Under the black liner was a clear indication that the pond had previously been fed by a spring coming out a few feet north of it. The spring came out of a pipe, from somewhere near our foundation (or from the other side of our foundation).

    If we reinstated the flow through the pond, instead of a stagnant pool full of water striders, leaves, and a few frogs, we could have something more lively and fresh. And, we’d get to engineer a waterfall.

    The planning began. Dave’s dad Nate, similarly inspired, booked a trip to visit from out east. Dave worked to get the end of the spring pipe excavated so that the pond work could begin in earnest once Nate arrived.

    Nate and Dave chipped away the concrete edge where they wanted the waterfall and created the waterfall and streambed using pond liner, river rocks, and rocks from the garden. They endured a false start where they filled the pond and it started leaking back up along the piping, re-designed the flow into the pond, replaced the liner, and finally got to enjoy the waterfall after three days work and many trips to the hardware store. My contribution was putting in my calla lily and voodoo lily bulbs near the spillway. Otherwise, I did other weeding and garden work while Nate and Dave reconfigured the pond and the liner and the piping..

    We watched the water flow into the pond this afternoon with our neighbors, and then once the pond had filled, we watched the overflow start to spill down the waterfall. There’s still work to be done – pond lining to trim, slate to arrange at the edges, landscaping to do, mulch to spread, and weeds to pull, but it’s flowing nicely across the pond and down the rocks and then back into its old streambed. Cool!

  • Music and breath heals

    A grasp of fresh air, originally uploaded by Bindaas Madhavi
    A grasp of fresh air, originally uploaded by Bindaas Madhavi

    I tweaked my back two weekends in a row. I have some history of back pain, largely stemming from a jaunty twist in my spine (scoliosis). And, because I bend towards my knitting, bend towards my computer monitor, and otherwise stress out my upper back and neck, my upper back gets cranky now and then.

    Once I’ve tweaked it, it is a long process of hot baths, ibuprophen, bodywork, arnica gel, and mostly just rest and time to undo whatever kink or constriction I’ve triggered.

    Boring.

    My interesting stories are the divergences from this pattern: I have had two experiences of spontaneous improvement in my neck/back pain: through pranayama breath, and at a music concert the other night.

    Pranayama heals

    The first spontaneous release I’ve experienced was in a yoga workshop taught in Ann Arbor by Navtej Johar at Sun-Moon Yoga. During the session, the pranayama breath work (shown in the photo above) released the kink that had stuck my neck for days. I have used pranayama breathing some since then, not enough considering its powerful effect that day….To encourage my practice, I recently picked up the Pranayama iPhone app by Saagara from itunes. I used it recently to relax during a bout of insomnia, and last night to further relax my back and neck. It helped!

    Music heals

    The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
    The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

    Sunday night was the only other time I’ve experienced seemingly “spontaneous” healing. I think I whacked out my upper back on Saturday by trying to move some largish rocks we have in our garden. I woke up Sunday morning kind of sprung behind my right shoulder blade. Later that day, I attended a concert at Rackham Auditorium. It was a reading by Alex Ross of his book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, accompanied by Ethan Iverson on the piano. While I enjoyed the crisp and funny writing, I found the turbulent 20th Century history revealed in the lives and concerns of its composers daunting.

    I was excited about the concert because I wanted to hear the music of the composers I’d read about. I also sometimes lose track of time, and so I was late for the performance and stressed out when I arrived. They wouldn’t seat us because the piece had started, so I waited, fretting, in the hall for the a slight break to be seated. Well, Rackham has very comfortable seats, and once I settled into our row, the soothing notes of the piano, even playing intellectual 12 tone music, which I’d expected to be annoying, had a physical effect on my body.

    I don’t know what Ethan Iverson was playing in that particular moment, but in the middle of the performance that included Babbitt, Bartok, Gershwin, Ives, Ligeti, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stravinsky, and Webern, I felt a muscle next to my shoulder blade go into a release that felt like an inverse spasm. It was a kind of drumming pattern of releases and then slight recontractions, but without pain. I don’t know what it was exactly – I’m going to guess, based on my experience with pranayama, that what might have helped was a relaxation in my own breathing in time to one of the pieces. Or, perhaps my absorption in the event let some other process take its course in my back. I doubt that new age spas around the world play a selection of 20th century classical music, but maybe they should. The concert had an unexpected and salutary effect on my body!

  • Greenovation TV (green #8)

    Ever wanted to know how to renovate your home the green way? For the DIY earth friendly homeowner, the folks at Greenovation.TV want to show you how. It’s a website and a media channel, launching Earth Day April 22.

    They’re available online 24/7. What’s even cooler is they’re local here in Ann Arbor, in my neighborhood!

    Greenovation.TV‘s Matt Grocoff will speak on “greening a historic home” at 7:30 on April 23 in the Bach School multi-purpose room. Matt reports that he pays in a year what many pay a month for utility costs since doing some updates to their Old West Side Ann Arbor home. I wish I could make it, but I will be traveling that day. I look forward to tuning into the channel as it grows!

    You can find out more in Concentrate’s feature article on GreenovationTV.

  • Fall chores

    Today was a day of fall chores: sweeping out the garage, tidying it and getting it ready to store the table and chairs for the winter, raking leaves from the back yard, and pulling in all of the “tender” bulbs (voodoo lily and calla lily) that I had planted in pots on the deck and porch. They’ll slumber in peat in a bin in my basement – cool and dark – until it is time for them to grow again in the spring.

    Nice to feel I’m ready for the change of season.

  • Canning – a direct experience of the abundance of summer (gratitude #38)

    It’s that time of year, the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market is a study in abundance, and my summer reading, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, has inspired me to can. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

    So, I took a perfectly good Saturday and Sunday and made two trips to the Farmer’s Market, a trip to the hardware store, two trips to a grocery store, burned many BTUs of gas on our gas stove, and taught myself to can following the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and an article on canning in the October 2008 Bon Appetit.

    This was my discovery:

    • $15 of organic roma tomatoes plus
    • a few dollars of organic shallots plus
    • a few dollars in organic lemon juice plus
    • $30 in canning supplies (jar lifter, magnetic lid lifter, pint jars, canning funnel)
    • labor peeling, seeding, stirring, ladling, and then boiling the jars of sauce

    makes about six pint jars of fresh tomato sauce, something which when purchased would have cost many dollars less than what I spent. Yet, I didn’t burn myself, had some fun cooking and learning, have some lovely jars of pinky-red tomatoes lighting up the shelves of my basement, and I have stored a bit of this lovely summer sunshine for later.

    I realized that canning is kind of like knitting a sweater. It’s not that I saved any money, it’s that I got to enjoy the process and engaging with something concrete – beautiful yarn in the case of a sweater, beautiful produce in the case of canning. That level of absorbtion and attention is almost intoxicating, while my hands were slicing the 50th tomato, my mind was wondering at the variety of shape and color and detail in the box of romas. Plus, I experienced a distinct sense of abundance when processing a big pile of tomatoes- their weight, their texture, their color, bounty. So, after I finished the tomatoes on Saturday, I was up for another round on Sunday. With dinner guests arriving at 6PM, I carefully planned my day of cornbread-baking, coleslaw-making, peach cobbler-baking, and my husband’s slow cooking of the spare ribs with more canning. I discovered that

    • $20 in fresh figs plus
    • zest of two lemons plus
    • sugar and brandy

    makes six 1/2-pint jars of drunken fig jam. It’s tasty, though I’ll have to arrange to get myself invited to sophisticated dinner or wine tasting parties where I can bring this as an addition to a cheese plate…Dear reader, let me know if you’re hosting such an event. I have the housewarming gift ready to go!

    I loved it, I’d do it again, and I realized just how much I love my dishwasher, which I think ran about 6 times this weekend, no fooling, and that’s even after I hand-washed all of the pots.

  • My CSA share keeps me eating veggies the old fashioned way: guilt

    So, I had a 1-4PM meeting today turn into a 1-6:30PM one with an hourlong trip on each side, and although it was a great meeting, I’m an introvert and was sorely in need of downtime afterwards. So, when I got home at 7:45, I was hungry and tired and would have very happily reached for some comfort food from the freezer or a local restaurant (chinese food? pizza?). But, I have this farm share from a local organic farm, and my fridge is filled with kale, beets, beet greens, green beans, onions, and the like.

    I even considered heating up frozen veggies, just because I didn’t think I could muster anything beyond tossing something into a bowl and punching 4 buttons on the microwave. Then I realized that was completely pathetic, and I couldn’t possibly. I imagined each bean and each beet staring at me, balefully as they wilted, while I feasted on non-organic and less vitamin rich frozen food because it was marginally more convenient.

    And then I recognized the awesome power of the farm share to improve my life. Yes, the veggies were organic and local, yes they were chock full of vegetabley-goodness like vitamins and minerals, but their real power was elsewhere. Yup, those veggies in the fridge could make me eat healthier just by their very presence. I’d already committed to them, several times, by signing up for the CSA share from Tantre Farm last fall, by picking them up this week, by giving them space in my fridge. After all that, how I could waste them? The frozen food would keep. I had to wash and slice and maybe even boil before I’d get my meal.

    I started with the beets. I scrubbed them and cut them into even blocks for a quick boil. But then, because I was crazed with hunger, I tentatively put one in my mouth and bit down. Raw beet was perfectly fine, tasty in fact. I turned off the water, chopped the beets more finely, tossed on a splash of fancy Zingerman’s balsamic vinegar and moved on to the next course. I prepped some kale, rinsing and chopping, and blanched it quickly. Nice.

    In probably 5 minutes, I had two very tasty dishes out of my organic veggie stockpile. Because the healthy food had guilted me out of it, I had protected myself from poor eating. By stocking the fridge with healthy food, I actually ate healthy food. And it was quick to prepare. Imagine, fresh fruit and veggies really are nature’s original fast food.