Amateur astronomer Paul Derrick’s Star Gazer column appears in The Big Bend Sentinel. Visit his site to find out how to get started stargazing. He explains magnitudes and angle distances which helps when you’re reading a planisphere, a star gazer’s must-have map. Before you begin your night sky watching adjust your eyes to the dark. Take along a red flashlight for reading. To make a white light flashlight red put red cellophane over the shield or paint it red with a marker.

Look to the southern sky. Far West Texas has some of the best night skies in the country.

Too much light pollution to see stars? Watch the moon and the planets. Or drive south about 15 miles into the country. If you are an urbanite find an astronomy club to stargaze with. http://www.astronomyclubs.com/

How to use a sky wheel, a planisphere

http://lawrencehallofscience.org/starclock/skywheel.html

Blossom Time

You might prepare them the way Diana Kennedy suggests, when writing in The Cuisines of Mexico about going  “…very early on Sunday mornings in October to the Xochimilco market to buy roses and plants for the terrace of our apartment and finding the new shoots of the zucchini plant, still with the flowers and half-formed little squash on them.  I would steam them all together and then eat them with butter and pepper.”

Stop squash production by picking the male flowers, the long stemmed ones. Make sure a bee isn’t sleeping in a curled blossom. Store them in a plastic bag in the fridge. Blow air into the bag so the blossoms are floating. When ready to use cut the squash blossoms up and sprinkle them in salads, or in quesadillas. Stuff them with cheese, dip them in egg and flour and fry them.

The Bee, The Blossom and the Beginning of Civilization at

http://www.farmstandmarfa.net/?p=122

An anthology of poems about birds, edited by Billy Collins, illustrated with watercolors by David Allen Sibley.
Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore and Sylvia Plath and many more.
Eamonn Grennan’s “On a 3 oz. Lesser Yellowlegs,
Departed Boston August 28, Shot Martinique September 3.”
Henry Carlile on the cardinal “He shocks us when he flies / like a red verb over the
snow.”

HEALTHY SALAD DRESSING

Boost the omega-3s in your diet.

Add a Tb of flax oil to the olive oil in your salad dressing. Increase the citrus or vinegar so that the flax does not dominate. I like to use yuzu juice, a citrus fruit, indispensable in Japanese cooking. Create your own by mixing grapefruit, tangerine and lemon juices.

NATIVE PLANT ORGANIZATIONS protect and nurture our native pollinators. You can too. Plant a Native bee garden. That little green creature in the garden you think is a fly…it’s a sweat bee.

Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute in Fort Davis, Texas

CDRI Native Bee Garden workshop June 12

http://cdri.org/

Native Plant Society of Texas http://npsot.org/

To find other native plant organizations that encourage the preservation and use of native plants in different regions of the country visit http://www.wildflower.org/organizations/

One initiative can make a transformative difference.

Over ten million acres of roadsides can be a resource for pollinator conservation. Plant them native. Defeat the chemicals and invasive exotics. Cut down on mowing. Rainwater run-off collects on the roadsides and waters the plants. Connect fragmented habitats with roadside plantings.

http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation-roadsides/

from our friends at Sunnyside Organic Seedlings
http://www.organic.biz/

Pilar at Sunnyside in Richmond, CA. They grow heirloom seeds!

Find out how by attending their next gathering in Shelburne Farms, Vermont, June 9-11, 2010.

http://www.slowmoneyalliance.org/national-gathering.html

It is a new way of connecting investors to local food systems, catalyzing new forms of social investing and philanthropy for the 21st century. Join the emerging network of investors, donors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and activists who are giving birth to the nurture capital industry.

Let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up, asking:

* What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?

* What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?

* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?

Peach-like, pineapple-colored, purple, nearing to black, golden, vermilion, cherry-red and hues of green; round, pear-shaped, striped, smooth; small as pearls and as large as grapefruits, tomatoes make our mouths water and our hearts beat faster.

It’s time to plant them.

Plant heirloom tomatoes. These seeds have been saved and passed down for generations.  Preserving genetic diversity in this way protects the tomato from being lost to plant epidemics and pest infestations.  You can find heirloom plants at farmers’ markets and nearby at One Way nursery in Alpine.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated. Seeds from open-pollinated varieties produce plants and fruit that are identical to their parents.

Indeterminate fruit is produced not just on the ends of the stems but all along the vining branches.  These are large, bushy plants with long reaching vines, heavy with fruit.


Planting Tomatoes

Dig holes 3-4 feet apart.  Mix compost and fishmeal or alfalfa and cottonseed meal into the hole.  A handful of soft rock phosphate placed directly under the tomato transplant will develop a good root system quickly.

Since roots develop all along the tomato’s stem, pick off the lower leaves and lay the plant in a small trench. Turn the top of the plant up and bury the leafless stem in the trench.  Or, dig a deep hole and bury the tomato stem up to its topmost leaves.

Water deeply.  It’s always a good idea to water with seaweed or fish emulsion.

Sprinkle a cup or two of cornmeal around the base of the plant.

• Mulch with partially decomposed composed, manure, pigweed and alfalfa.
• Make a tomato cage using a strong fencing, such as concrete reinforcing wire, that has 4×4 inch spacing so that your hand can reach into the tomato bush and pick the fruits.  The cage should be about 4 feet high and 2 ½ feet in diameter. Stake the cage securely into the ground with foot long stakes.  I drive a nail into the stake at an angle and hook the nail onto the cage as I pound the stake into the ground.
• For the first few weeks or more keep the plant covered with a floating row cover.  You can drape a small piece over the plant or attach a large piece to the cage with clothespins.
• Make sure to feed your tomatoes all your eggshells and old milk. They’ll love it.
• See omma’s aarden online for planting in accordance with astrological signs.
• http://www.ommas-aarden.net/perp_lunar_garden.htm
• May 17 and 18th when the moon is in Cancer is good for tomatoes.  The best time to plant tomatoes according to the lunar calendar will be two or three days before the full moon.

_J. Howard Garrett and Malcolm Beck in their excellent Texas Organic Vegetable Gardening book strongly recommend weekly sprays of Garret Juice with garlic and potassium bicarbonate added to the recipe.
Make your own gallon of juice:
_1-2 cups of compost tea, made by soaking manure in a bucket of water for a week or two.  It will look but not taste like iced tea.
_1 T liquid seaweed
_1 T molasses
_1 T apple cider vinegar
Add 1ounce of citrus oil to concoct an insect control.

The Texas Organic Vegetable Gardening book includes a how-to- plant a Japanese ring.  This a method of growing tomatoes around a compost ring.  Set up a 4 foot wide compost circle of wire and fill it with garden refuse, manure, kitchen wastes and soil.  Build four or five tomato cages and place them around the compost circle.  When you water the compost, the nutrients will feed your tomatoes.

Plant bush beans and basil around your tomatoes.  Brush your hand through the leaves.  Spray your plants weekly with the Garret Juice.  Pinch off the first few flowers.

The tomatoes will make a jungle that will become a habitat for wildlife.  Orb spiders will move in until the hard frost.  Dragonflies and bees will visit.  Birds will too.  Some gardeners suggest hanging red Xmas ornaments on the branches to deter the birds.  Beetles of every variety will appear out of nowhere.  Worms will gobble at the feet of the plants.  Cats and dogs will seem intoxicated with happiness as they explore the tomato garden.  But the happiest and satisfied of all will be the gardener, who equates summer and childhood with the tomato plant and its delicious fruit.