Martin and Alice (that’s me) have gone on a road trip to the Southwest. Martin is now up on his mountain spending his nights watching the sky, or at least watching instruments that are watching the sky. He’ll be up there for about a month, and I was lucky that he wanted to drive to Tucson this time and let me ride along. Because it is not quite spring in Iowa, I was able to get away for 9 days to see spring in the desert, and also to see my sister Lisa and her family. This lovely picture is from a quick detour along Bumble Bee road north of Phoenix. The desert was green, with millions of tiny flowers, white, yellow, and many purples, and everywhere humming honey bees. Last night Martin took us (Alice, Lisa, and nephews Gio and Marco) up his mountain on death defying roads to see super high-tech telescopes and to watch the stars, uninhibited by light or the earth’s atmosphere. We were impressed. Check out Martin’s pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mschroedter/AmesTucsonMarch2009?authkey=Gv1s...

I’m jealous of Martin’s lenten desert experience, which he doesn’t seem to appreciate fully. However, it is still good to get a little time away and to seek some perspective. On Monday I will take a trip to Casa Maria, the Tucson Catholic Worker to see what they have to teach me.

Before I left, I attempted to order all our seeds and plants for the season. We now have a 5-year lease on our land, and decided to plant some berries, fruits, and perennials. Five years is still pretty short for those kinds of things, so we’re trying not to go crazy. But we all long for perennials and it gives us great joy to be planting these. If anyone out there has cuttings, suckers, or reject edible plants, we’d love to try to grow them. For annuals, Nicholas has started some onions and broccolis, I’ve started some herbs and flowers, and when I get back next week, hopefully we’ll start almost everything else. Thanks to all those at home, like Nate and Chris, who are lovingly caring for our wee plants.

We have ambitious plans for our upcoming season. As early as possible, we’d like to build a greenhouse, and a loft in the shed. We’ll miss Martin during these projects, but he is lending us his tools in his absence. We also are expanding our CSA to 15 members, and are expecting to be more organized all around. I’ll let everyone know more details as we figure them out. For now, good night from the desert.
-Alice