A More Zest(ra)-y Sex Life for Women?

Gratuitous flowers for a sex post: Cascading morning glories captured by me, Sungold, in October, back before the frost bit ‘em.

The Denver Post ran an article today asking why an arousal-booster for women called Zestra can’t find TV stations willing to run their ads, even as Viagra ads are literally driving in circles around us. Historiann took the article to task for its casual disavowal of feminism, and I’ve got nothin’ to add to her critique except a vigorous nod of approval. Figleaf chimed in to say that the stations’ ad policies spotlight the illegitimacy of autonomous female desire.

What most struck me about the article, though, was its conflation of libido and arousal, which is endemic in “science writing” that reports on “pink viagra.” Here’s how reporter Mary Winter framed it:

Now, you would not know it from the $300-million annual ad campaign for erection-enhancing ads for Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, but women suffer more sexual dysfunction than men do — 43 percent to 31 percent, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In other words, the potential market for flagging female libidos is huge. But here’s the irony: When the makers of Zestra went to 100 television networks and stations to buy ads, the vast majority refused them. The few stations that did take their money would run the ads only after midnight or during the daytime.

The stations “told us they were not comfortable airing the ads,” Zestra co-founder Mary Jaensch told “Nightline.” The double-standard here — men, you deserve sexual pleasure, and women, what’s wrong with you hussies? — is breathtaking.

So how about this ad: a Camaro, a woman, and a vibrating driver’s seat?

(This is just the end of the article; read the whole thing here. Winter is very sharp and witty on the Viagra ads!)

In a way, it’s unfair to pick on Winter, because most writing about female sexual dysfunction fails to draw basic distinctions between arousal, orgasm, desire, and libido. It also tends to ignore the reality of the physical pain some women experience (which K has explored eloquently at Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction.) In practice, women can of course have issues with any or all of the above, and problems in one area can easily spill into another. A woman  suffering from vulvodynia, for instance, might be able to orgasm, but if sexual activity hurts, that’s likely to dampen her libido. Another woman might have a generally low libido (meaning she doesn’t crave sex very often) but develop desire responsively to her partner, at least in certain situations. There are probably as many variations as there are women.

Now, getting back to Zestra and the Denver Post: Winter’s article refers mainly to libido. She’s partly on the right track, insofar as that “42 percent” figure refers mainly to women who complain about low libido. (Some feminists have criticized that figure as too high, but let’s set that debate aside for today.) Winter does hint at the primary issue here – arousal – in that apparent throwaway line about a vibrating driver seat in the Camaro. Why yes, I think quite a few of us gals might enjoy such a ride! But if we got a good buzz per gallon, that wouldn’t mean our libido was revving – only that our engine was purring smoothly.

Libido is not the primary target for Zestra, though Zestra’s website refers to a whole host of potential benefits: stronger libido, greater satisfaction, more earth-shaking orgasms, and a more harmonious relationship with one’s partner. (That last point comes up only in testimonials; the overall tone of the website is “try this for yourself,” not “use this to please your long-suffering husband.”) It’s being marketed to women who suffer from sexual problems of any sort due to illness (including cancer), postpartum changes, menopause, antidepressants, stress, and even widowhood. But what does it really do?

Zestra’s primary mechanism, as far as I understand it, is to enhance arousal and response during sexual activity. As far as I can see without having tried it myself, it looks like it might increase engorgement and/or creaste prickling sensations in a nice way. In the best case, yummy sensations start a cascade of increasing desire during lovemaking. As a topical agent applied directly to one’s ladyparts, Zestra doesn’t act directly on libido, which is regulated by the brain and a complex dance of different hormones and neurotransmitters (including estrogen and testosterone, but also thyroid hormone, stress hormones, dopamine and lots of other nifty “messenger” chemicals). A topical gel won’t directly influence that chemical brew. It’s only logical, though, that if sex is more pleasurable, some women might want it more. Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher has written about how hot sex with a new partner gives us a dopamine high akin to cocaine (quick summary of her ideas here). Maybe hot sex with in a newly reinvigorated relationship can give us the same buzz?

Also, the testing for Zestra relied on women who committed to have sex eight times in a month, so it’s unlikely many of them had a super low libido. (For more details on the testing, check out the clinical study.) These women were already open to regular sex. As a group they sound to me more like women who basically like sex but were frustrated by difficulty getting aroused. They don’t sound like the subset of women who’ve given up on sex – a group that constitutes about 15% of American marriages, by the way. (This according to Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times, where “sexless” was defined as no sex at all with one’s spouse during the previous six to twelve months.)

In other words, the mechanism behind Zestra appears to be entirely different than flibanserin, an orally-administered drug recently rejected by the FDA for ineffectiveness. Flibanserin was supposed to increase libido directly by changing one’s brain chemistry. It too was compared to Viagra, and quite wrongly so: Viagra targets a mans plumbing, so to speak. It produces an erection (though it almost always requires mental and/or physical stimulation to be effective). Flibanserin left physical arousal untouched while aiming to increase psychological arousal and desire.

Calling flib a “pink viagra” was just misleading. In the case of Zestra, the comparison appears more apples-to-apples, since both Viagra and Zestra appear to work by increasing engorgement.

I still think it’s too bad that flib flopped. Yes, the drug was intended to be a Big Pharma Bonanza. I don’t really give a shit. If it had really helped women live better, I’d be all for it. I trust women to make decisions about their bodies (though I also insist on our responsibility to understand our bodies. At any rate, flib failed to gain FDA approval because it didnt work.

As far as I know, there’s still nothing  on the market that specifically helps women who only desire sex once in a blue moon. For some women, hormone therapy (sometimes including testosterone as well as estrogen) delivers a libido boost. But hormones carry some risk. Women fear breast cancer if they take estrogen and they fear growing a beard and unibrow if they take T. But these are the choices, because there’s no drug that specifically targets libido.

Zestra interests me because it seems to be quite safe (worst side effect: transient burning sensations in some rather precious real estate). I’m skeptical to the extent that their studies are pretty small. Unavoidably, the very fact of running a study is an intervention in itself. This can have real effects on its findings. How many of the couples studied would have had sex at least eight times in a month? If most would’ve had less, that means Zestra wasn’t the only independent variable. Perhaps the twice-weekly commitment, combined with a new toy or just wall-to-wall pictures of George Clooney and Jon Hamm would fire their engines just as well. I’m pretty sure I’d be off and roaring on that program! (Where do I sign up?)

Seriously, I have been meaning to try Zestra just for the fun of it, since it sounds like its potential benefits might not be limited to people suffering from difficulty with arousal … and, y’know, anything for science! I’ve got a packet of it in a drawer but I’m not so sure what my lab partner would think.

As always, I’m very curious if any of you out there in bloglandia have given Zestra a whirl? And if so – are you willing to dish? Pretty please?

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Still Alive on November 15

after multiple nights of sub-freezing temperatures

one rose

 

two Silver Tidal Wave petunias

three yellow nasturtiums

and a single orange nasturtium.

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Prop. 19 Caturday

I don’t live in California, so I don’t have a chance to vote for Prop. 19, which would legalize catnip marijuana. But I still loved this comment in Michael Pollan’s recent interview posted on Alternet:

I always kept a little patch of catnip in my garden for my old tomcat, Frank, who really liked it. It’s not a very difficult plant to grow. The patch was hard to miss, because it was so shrubby. But every evening around five or six o’clock, just around the time that I was going to the garden to harvest something for dinner, Frank would come down there and look at me. What he wanted to know was where that catnip was, because he managed to forget every single night. And I would point it out to him or sometimes bring him over to it, and then he would pull some leaves off, sniff them, eat them, and start rolling in the grass. He was clearly having a powerful drug experience. Then he would sneak away and sleep it off somewhere.

But the interesting thing was, as much as this became part of his daily routine, he could not remember where the catnip was. And it occurred to me that this might be a kind of evolutionary strategy on the part of the plant: instead of killing the pest, it would just really confuse it. Killing pests can be counterproductive, because they breed or select for resistance very quickly. This happens with a lot of poisonous types of plants, as it does with pesticides. But if the plant merely confuses the pests or disables their memory, it can defend itself against them overindulging. Pure speculation, as I say in the book. It occurred to me that it might help explain what’s happening with cannabis, which of course also disables memory.

(Read the rest here.)

Of course, it’s easier to muddle memory when the brain in question is the size of a walnut. And even so, Grey Kitty always knew exactly where the nip was stashed. One time while we were out, she got up on a high kitchen shelf and pulled down the baggie. We found her sprawled on the living room floor, stoned out of her little gourd. She was lying in front of the television, as if she was hoping it might magically turn itself on.

Stoned kitteh from ICHC?

 

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I Has a Moonflower

A couple of folks have asked me off-blog if I’m okay in the wake of my post last Monday when I wrote, “I’m wound up, worried, and sad about a bunch of things I can’t write about here.” I’m sorry I tripped some alarms. There were several students of mine involved in deep, severe crises last week. They pushed most other thoughts out of my head. I couldn’t find a way to talk about their various plights publicly while maintaining their privacy and confidentiality. Their stories point to some broad social problems, so they’ll probably inspire me to write about them in some way, maybe just with a time lag to shroud identities.

Anyway, I am okay. Overworked and overtired, but okay.

And I has a moonflower. In fact, I have heaps of them. They’re five to six inches in diameter. They open in the evenings and close during the day – the opposite of morning glories, with whom they share heart-shaped foliage.

How could I not be okay?

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Of Tofu, Pop-Tarts, and Boobs

Addressing a proposal in Australia to make baby formula a prescription-only product, Spilt Milk strikes the perfect balance between breastfeeding advocacy and respect for women’s individual situations, experiences, and autonomy.

As a lactivist I obviously have a problem with the marketing of infant formula and any implication that it is as good as, or better than, breast milk. But as a human being I also know that people are hurt, seriously hurt, when they feel judged and shamed and when they are exhaustedly holding a hungry, crying, baby at 2:30 am and it feels like no one can help them.

Removing systemic barriers to breastfeeding certainly may require improved measures to reduce the popularity of formula – popularity which can be attributed to decades of marketing not only to the public but to health professionals. A big part of that marketing is about convenience: huge displays in chemist shops and regular sales at the supermarket of products in familiar-looking tins add to the impression of ease of use and the normalisation of artificial feeding. But whether we like it or not, formula and its ready availability is important to many families. Removing that now feels like a stick where a carrot should be.

Give parents the tools to make sound decisions that benefit them and their babies. Give parents not only choices, but supported, realistic choices. Don’t tell a woman who has to go out of the home to work, or who has other children to look after and little support, that the choice to dedicate perhaps days to increasing her milk supply through frequent feeding and skin-skin contact to avoid supplementing with formula is an easy one: it clearly is not. Education and information are hugely important but they are only part of the picture when practical barriers still so often interfere with breastfeeding relationships.

Adding practical barriers to formula use, as I think this proposal would, isn’t a particularly kind way to help parents. Being caught between a rock and a hard place doesn’t make the rock seem any easier to budge: it just makes it hurt more to be stuck there.

(There’s lots more where this came from.)

I want to zero in on the problem of shaming. It’s illuminating to shift the focus away from infants and toward the choices that we adults make about our own bodies.

For instance: I had a super healthy dinner tonight: baked tofu, locally-grown Carola potatoes, locally-grown watermelon, and sliced golden tomatoes that I grew from seed. (I had been trying to grow these ‘maters, Aunt Gertie’s Gold, since I read rave reviews about them on Garden Web, but managed to kill them on the first attempt by mixing in too much organic fertilizer when I planted them out. Another year, they failed to germinate. This year – success!) I added a dab of butter to the potatoes and marinated the tofu in teriyaki sauce. I was in late-summer heaven.

But last night? Late after the kids were in bed? I ate a strawberry Pop-Tart. And damn, was that good too.

What if someone had decided to shame me about that Pop-Tart? Would that have caused me to ascertain that those potatoes were also organically grown, instead of just sustainably? Might I have foregone the butter? (Admittedly, if I’d been feeling well instead of ushering out a nasty GI infection, that pat of butter would have blossomed.)

Hell No!

I would have had a Pop-Tart for dessert.

Now, luckily people have not often shamed me for my Pop-Tart weakness. We don’t eat them regularly. My kids love them precisely because a Pop-Tart is a pink unicorn in their world, and a yummy one, at that. Most crucially, though: I am NOT FAT. And therefore I can only shamed along the “bad mommy” axis for keeping Pop-Tarts in stock; I’m pretty impervious to fat-shaming. (Fat-shaming would surely be worth a whole ‘nother post, and this post would be a whole lot different if not for my thin privilege.)

Of course, “bad mommy” shaming is the main tactic used against women who don’t conform to the loftiest ideals of breastfeeding practice. They’re told in no uncertain terms that their child’s survival depends on what they feed him or her. And they’d better feed mother’s milk, but then the true shaming begins. The new mother is eating all wrong! At least, this must be true, or the baby would settle better, sleep longer, give up his eight-hour crying jags. And so they’d better watch out for garlic! Peanuts! Soy! Cow’s milk! Eggs! That dejected bottle of prune juice, purchased solely in the hope of warding off postpartum constipation? Might as well dump it, dear; no one else in your family will go near it.

Through all this, the mother is trying to suss out her child’s new and changing needs. If she’s poor and/or not white, the “well-meant” advice may well come wrapped in a thick wrapping of paternalism. How’s she supposed to develop her sense of mastery and competency in this hullaboo of “Yer doin’ it rong!”

Really, what new mothers need is respect for the fact that they still are humans, and that their body remains their own. The baby has a moral claim on breastmilk, sure; the mother has a moral claim on being an autonomous person. In most cases, she also is willing to make very significant sacrifices for her baby – her sleep, bodily fluids, her illusion of invulnerability,  the very minerals from her bones. Shame her, though, and you’ve shortcircuited her chance to figure out what combination of sacrifices (because there will be sacrifices) could help her child thrive without eviscerating her as a woman – as a person.

And darn it – sometimes every mother needs a Pop-Tart. Mine was strawberry. Toasted. And I haven’t breastfed since spring 2003, so how much more do new mothers need a Tart? I don’t believe food should have to be earned through moral machinations, but I do tend to think that I’ve got a lifetime entitlement to Pop-Tarts. I’m certain that there’s still one box of brown sugar/cinnamon in the basement. I will eat it with utter lack of shame. Next morning, with nothing but a Tart headache, I will help my kids get their reasonably healthy breakfasts and lunches. They are growing. I’m pretty sure we’re doing something right. Quite possibly something that deserves a Pop-Tart and champagne celebration.

I’d be interested in your metaphorical Pop-Tarts – and that goes for non-parents, too. What small self-indulgences keep you afloat? How do you gird yourself against scolds?

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In Which I Acquire a Hypodermic Needle

I’m not planning to convert my Ph.D. to an M.D. anytime soon, nor to start mainlining heroin. But I did purchase a hypodermic needle this weekend. I’m using it to doctor … my summer squash plants.

Yes, that’s right. I’ve been shooting up my squash. My old enemy, the squash vine borer, has taken up residence in my garden again. I recognized her because she comes around every year. I’d hoped in vain to avoid her this summer because I planted my squash seeds so late – June 22 – that the borers should no longer be flying. Or so say all the Internet sources I consulted (one of which claimed they’d be done by the Fourth of July).

I know, I know: never trust the Internet.

And so, I’m doing battle with the squash vine borer. The single adult I saw isn’t the issue, actually; it’s the offspring that are trying to kill my plants. They are grubs. I find them so repugnant that I’ll just say they are the stuff of bad sci fi (and no, they aren’t pictured anywhere in this post, so grub-o-phobes like me are safe to read on). They grow to well over an inch while tunneling through the vines, girdling them, and killing the plant from within. Their calling card is a small pile of yellow crud called “frass” that appears at the base of the plant. Think of them much like the red crosses daubed on the doors of plague sufferers: once the frass appears, you know the plant is doomed.

But this year, I decided to fight back. Yesterday afternoon, I bought a bottle of bacteria (bacillus thuringiensis, aka BT), which will infect and (I hope) kill the grubs before they’re able to do much damage. Using my new hypodermic needle, I squirted a solution of this into as many vines as possible. (Summer squash has hollow stems.) Then I poured the rest around the base of the plants. I’m planning to spray with it weekly. Or daily. I’m determined to win, this time.

However, I worried that the BT wouldn’t be too slow to kill the larvae already at work. So, again per the advice of the Intertubes, I took a sharp knife and slit the stems just above the frass. There, I discovered two evildoers and dispatched them immediately. (I was, after all, wielding a sharp knife.)

During all this carnage, I also spotted cucumber beetles feeding on the blossoms of the summer squash. They were also attacking my butternut vines (which are so vigorous that they, in turn, are menacing New York and Tokyo, much like last year). A massive thunderstorm was moving in on us, but just before it broke, I planted a couple of yellow sticky traps. Today, despite the storm, they looked like this.

Ha!

Unfortunately the spotted cucumber beetles are more resistant than the striped variety. (Are they smarter? Or just stronger? At any rate, they are refudiating my traps.) After dinner tonight, I chased some of them with the Dust Buster. Hey, I may look ridiculous vacuuming my squash, but I’m determined to stick with organic methods

And this WILL be the year I prove I can grow zucchinis – or at least yellow summer squash. This little beauty is about 4” long.

If I can nurse my plants until this teensy baby squash matures, it’ll be a personal record for me.

And yes, I do realize that zucchini is the one veggie that everyone can grow by the bushel.

This evening, I talked on the phone with my mom and learned that shooting up cucurbits actually has a family history. Way back before I was born, my dad and their neighbor Fran took a hypodermic to some watermelon. They pumped it up with vodka instead of BT. And yes, I know some folks do this for parties, but these melons … were still on the vine. They died on the vine. Oops.

Measured against that history, one-and-a-half yellow summer squash may well be a family record. By my personal standards, it’s already a bountiful harvest. Most years, my yield of summer squash has been a big old ZERO. But oh, I dream of such excess that I’ll have to turn squash into baked goods.

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Not Quite Safe-for-Work Garden Fantasies

My time in Berlin is almost up. I’m excited to see my garden in a couple of days, but I have to admit it’s been pretty neglected this year. It got more love from my friend (and friend of this blog) Hydraargyrum in my absence than it did from me all spring. For the first time since I started gardening, I didn’t place a single order from the seed catalogs. I barely even browsed them, though Thompson and Morgan was parked in the bathroom for a while. If I had gotten my act together, I would have ordered their seeds for Gomphocarpus physocarpus, aka “Hairy Balls.”

Gives a new meaning to “garden porn,” doesn’t it?

And yes, that’s what they’re really called. Srsly. T&M says they’re easy to grow, so maybe next year. For now, they’re sold out. Guess I’ll have to plant a fall crop of lettuce and arugula instead.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user turtlemom4bacon, used under a Creative Commons license.

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Radical Compassion and the HCR Victory

I’m sitting in front of my TV, like so many of you, watching the post-HCR vote speechifying. I’m grinning like a fool, tearfully.

James Clyburn just said that Nancy Pelosi got it done through tenacity and compassion. I’ll have more to say about this later, but I think that this combination – which I’ll call radical compassion – is precisely what we need to move forward, and not just in the healthcare arena.

(And speaking of hope: My miniature iris is up, too.)

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If My Garden Were a Reality Show …

… these would be the survivors still on the island.

All of these chard pictures are brought to us courtesty of occasional commenter Hydraargyrum. It was he who covered the chard back in late November, when its ice-encrusted destiny was apparently sealed. Instead, he came by my house and dropped a blanket over the chard, allowing me to harvest more in December and then coax it through the winter under cover.

Don’t ask me what the brick means in the next pic. It is a local brick. Does that make it magic? Dunno, but it helped hold down the agricultural cloth (aka Remay) while the winter winds whipped ’round my chard. The inscription is “ATHENS BLOCK,” in case that’s driving you slowly bonkers.

I will admit that this chard will be far beyond assertive. It will start as obnoxious, and then bolt, because it’s a biennial and destined to go to seed this spring. We’ll eat it anyway, at least until bolting makes it outright revolting.. And by “we,” I emphatically don’t mean my offspring.

Yesterday I spilled the beans about our crocus appearing, so as recompense for your putting up with my endless chard-blogging, here’s a particularly purple view. They’re survivors too, aren’t they?

Happy Spring, everyone! The equinox slipped by me yesterday, but at least my flowers didn’t miss it.

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When Cynicism Dissolves into Air

This evening, within a twenty-minute span, I hear that my Congresscritter (Charlie Wilson) has pledged to vote yes on the health-care bill. Then I read a student paper that made me cry with gratitude, because it’s beautifully written, and because she says my class had “influenced me on a personal level more than any class I have ever taken.” A few minutes later, another student says the class changed her life. And then another.

I take only very partial credit. These kids mostly have very supportive families, and those who don’t have shown amazing fortitude in getting into college. They have survived the full spectrum of human tragedy: divorce of their parents, death of parents and spouses and other loved ones, brain tumors, rapes, unwanted pregnancy, and post-traumatic stress, just for starters. They’ve been an extraordinarily intelligent, engaged, and open group, despite the large size of the class (90 at the beginning, 74 now).

Also, I didn’t originally create this course on religion, gender, and sexuality. A colleague of mine designed it. I now feel like it’s “mine,” in my gut and heart and mind, but only after teaching it three times.

So when I say I’m grateful and humble rather than “proud,” please believe me.

And Charlie Wilson? What does he have to do with my students? Well, he joined them in proving that people can surprise us. Their inner compass can point toward integrity, even when the political landscape is constantly shifting. For his courage to do the right thing (and never mind Stupak), he too has my gratitude.

Or maybe it was just that email I sent him yesterday, threatening never to canvass for him again if he didn’t vote yes? Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, though, and say he listened to his conscience instead.

Whatever the case, my cynicism about politics and my doubt about the efficacy of teaching have both been lightly buoyed away like the first airborne seeds of spring.

And no, these guys don’t propagate by seed, but they’re the prettiest crocuses I’ve got so far this year. Photo by me, Sungold, taken in my backyard two days ago.

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Tuesday Recipe: Assertive Chard

Okay, so technically I made this yesterday. And to be honest, there’s not really a recipe. The only trick to it is that you need to have 1) planted your own chard earlier in the year, and 2) nursed it through the first several hard freezes. Mine survived only thanks to the ministrations of my friend (and occasional commenter) Hydraargyrum, who covered it with a tarp while I was in California. I’ve since substituted Remay (a light agricultural row-cover fabric) for the tarp. It lets some sunlight through while trapping just enough heat. This is not a happy chard existence. It’s sort of a veal-pen for veggies. But hey, it’s already in a vegetative state.

It’s still pretty, isn’t it?

Anyway, I harvested enough yesterday to make chard greens with fried eggs and English muffins for dinner. I normally like to cook up the stems, too, but having survived several nights of 15 degrees Fahrenheit, the stems collapsed into mush. So I trimmed off as much stem as possible and cooked the greens in a non-stick pan with a splash of added water. Once they were wilted but still held a bit of shape, I added two tablespoons of butter and a dash of salt and pepper.

Here you can see the sprinkling of snow the leaves picked up as I harvested them. I’m a snow cynic, but golly, the snow sparkled like tiny diamonds.

And here’s the view from my back porch (the garden is behind the peachy garage) right after I cut the chard.

Be forewarned that there’s no way most kids will eat chard that’s this intense. My Bear, who’s pretty adventurous for a kid, wouldn’t even try it. That’s where the English muffins bridged the calorie gap.

To be honest, I prefer my chard younger and milder, but I still thought it absolutely RAWKED to be able to havest anything from my garden on the 28th of December. That’s a new record, beating the previous mark of arugula for Christmas Eve 2005. It would be really cool if my chard survives until I’ve started my first flat of seeds for next year’s garden.

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Whereupon I am Reminded: Pumpkins Don’t Grow in Cans

At 4:30 today, my husband and I settled up the idea of making a turkey-dinner-without-the-turkey for our Christmas meal. Hey, we east mostly veggie, and to be honest, the whole family could happily crawl into a barrel of my stuffing and eat our way out over the course of a week.

So I found myself in Kroger at 5 p.m. the day before Christmas Eve, which is a fool’s errand under any circumstances. Still, I found everything I needed, including duct tape (or Duck Tape, as it seems to be called these days?) for my little Bear. Until it dawned on me that maybe a turkey-dinner-without-turkey might still require a pumpkin pie.

Using my shopping cart as a batter ram (a skill I learned in German supermarkets), I jostled my way back through the store – but no canned pumpkin was to be found. Fortunately, the cashier at the register was a former student of mine, who’s still working at Kroger while he finishes school. And even more fortunately, he had answer for me.

Less fortunately, the answer was this: Kroger has been out of canned pumpkin since Thanksgiving! Something about bad weather and harvest.

Sure enough, when I consulted the google just now, I learned that heavy rains kept pumpkins from being harvested. Maybe some of them first rotted in the fields; ultimately, the ones that didn’t get picked fell victim to frost.

It is good to know I can make a pumpkin pie from butternut squash if need be. It’s probably even more salutary to be reminded that pumpkins don’t grow in cans. They grow on vines. They’re tender fruit. And when the weather and climate don’t cooperate, pumpkins are only a vague Halloween memory. I’m wishing we hadn’t left those uncarved would-be Jack-o-lanterns freeze and then liquify on our front porch.

Also, it’s sobering to realize that Libby controls virtually the whole pumpkin market.

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Turning back toward the Sun

I hate the shortness of the days. I’m not even really complaining; when I lived in Berlin (at the 51st parallel, same as Winnipeg) I sort of went to bed in November and stayed there until March. Or so it seemed. I’m just bright enough to realize that southeast Athens is kinder to me in winter.

I love that starting today, we’ll slowly move toward heat and light. My chard still lives, along with the shrinking remnants of my Silver Tidal Wave petunias. Otherwise? I’m waiting until I can plant again.

Until then, last year’s pansies in their June glory will have to help me keep the faith. (If you can’t see the pansies, they’re mostly larger-than-life, with saucy little faces in garish colors. They make me happy.)

Here’s wishing you a hopeful solstice!

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Giving Thanks for … Chard

And why not? It’s the last ragged remnant of my harvest. The tomatoes visible behind the chard are actually riddled with fungus. They wouldn’t taste like summer anymore, anyway. After taking months to recover from our pair of hungry bunnies, the chard is still bitterly delicious. It apparently enjoys a light flirtation with frost. I hope it’ll still stand tall in ten days, when I return from California.

For now, I’m grateful to have time with my family. Everyone is (reasonably) healthy. None of the various cancers in my family has made an encore appearance. I’m still recovering from last winter’s mystery illness, and as long as I notice continued improvement, my spirits are (mostly) good. My father is clearer-headed than I’d expected. There’s hope that his memory lapses may be at least partly due to a vitamin B12 deficiency, and thus treatable. My niece is recovering well from back-to-back swine flu and a complex bone break that required surgery. My own kids are masquerading as angels, so thrilled are they to be with their cousins and grandparents. My mom still makes the world’s most delicious caramel rolls.

Everything dear to me is as fragile and transient – as tough and resilient – as my garden. My task is to be in the moment, savor the last leaves of the harvest, taste their solid transience, and know that planting time is only weeks away.

Happy Thanksgiving, kind readers. May your blessings taste as sweet as mine.

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Why Everyone Should Have …

… a butterfly bush.

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Tuesday Recipe: Zucchini Muffins

Upon my return from Germany 10 days ago, I harvested one massive summer squash. Since then, I’ve gotten just one more measly little yellow squash. It was delicious. My husband and I ate it with gratitude and refused to share with the kids. (They didn’t want it, so that worked out fine.) Thanks to the evil squash vine borer (avoid that link if squeamish about grubs), this was probably my first and last perfect summer squash for this season. The vine borer larvae have been severed the vines at their base and my last summer squash plant is dying.

So there was a lot of pressure on that overgrown squash to achieve transcendence, or at least muffinhood. However, the dang thing was hard as a rock. Grating marble might’ve been easier. It also had this odd green ring.

By the time I realized that my squash had suffered an unfortunate encounter with Medusa, I’d already mixed half the muffin ingredients. I was committed. And so off I trotted to the local health food store (luckily just a block away) for some zucchini.

The muffins turned out great anyway. Here’s how to make them:

Zucchini Muffins

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 small can crushed pineapple, well drained
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 teaspoon nutmeg

Beat together the eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla, until thick and foamy. Stir in zucchini and pineapple. Combine flour, soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Stir gently into first mixture, just to blend well.

For muffins bake at 350 degree for 25 minutes. Makes 24 muffins.

For bread, bake in two greased and floured 5×9″ pans at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

You’ll note that the instruction do not include “harvest massive squash from the garden.”

This is how my muffins turned out. They were transcendent in their own way. And the kids ate them with gusto, even though I didn’t bother giving them an alias. (The Tiger did ask if I could make ‘em without zucchini, even as he was begging for thirds.)

See, I can grow impatiens just fine. From seed. I could tell you all about that. But if I were you, I wouldn’t take any gardening advice from a wench who can’t even grow @%&*#! zucchini.

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I’d Butter Nut Do This Again

Plant butternut squash too close to my tomatoes, that is.

During the month I was in Germany, my butternut vines wound their way through several rows of tomato cages and out the other side. Look closely at the jungle below and you’ll see lots of large leaves that are clearly not tomato-esque.

The mondo vines then spawned a massive squash that’s hanging about three feet above ground. (Note also the blossom forming next to it – yikes!)

The butternut vines are also invading my chard cage (where the chard is not flourishing quite as hoped; I’d had to replant thanks to my rabbit friends).

As predicted, my summer squash is indeed under attack by squash vine borers, but I did harvest an oversized yellow squash, as big as my forearm, which is destined to become muffins and a frittata. I’m not sure, but I think that the damaged plant may have managed to re-root itself after the evil larvae severed the vine at its base. We sucked up one adult vine borer with the dust buster. I’m sure it’s only the vanguard. The picture shows a bit of the dead foliage.

The “summer squash seed mix” also produced a blobular fruit that looks suspiciously like a spaghetti squash. If anyone can ID it positively, let me know! It sure as sin doesn’t look anything like any summer squash I’ve seen.

That’s basil duking it out with the squash.

I’ve also got a couple of delicata squash, a nice mess of purple pole beans, lots of green tomatoes, and a few ripe Sungolds. My tomatoes are struggling a bit, with some yellowing/dying foliage that looks distressingly like early blight. (You can see it in the jungle photo at the top of the post.) My peppers are sulking, as per usual.

Apart from the tree growing out of the edge of the garden, we’ve got no real weed issues. That is, unless you consider my squash a weed, which might not be far off. Once again, yay for mulch!

But mostly, we’re just waiting for tomatoes to ripen. The ones my husband bought today – at the farmer’s market, no less – were downright crunchy.

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The Economics of Crowded Veggies

A few days ago, Amanda Marcotte posted at Pandagon on the trend toward urban gardening/farming – a trend that she diagnosed through similar trend pieces in Salon. So I’m not sure if she’s right about this being an actual trend, or if we’re just seeing the media flurry around Michelle Obama’s veggie patch. But I’m glad to see any rise in gardening, if only because everything you grow makes you more conscious of the origins of your food, and thus more skeptical toward the agri-industrial complex.

Amanda worries that neophytes might give up too easily, though, or find that gardening is downright uneconomical:

What’s interesting about the trend is that it’s not really certain that growing your own garden is necessarily going to save people money, as Amy Benfer notes.  In the 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt’s push for people to start victory gardens was incredibly effective—up to 40% of all produce grown in the country was in victory gardens.  Numbers like that would make one think that this resurgence would have similar results, but I think a lot fewer people (particularly the political foodie types that generally live in urban centers) have as much space to garden, and collectively, we have a lot less know-how.  Of course, if people stick with it for a few years, they’ll learn what works and what doesn’t, and it will start to save them money.  Of course, that requires staying put for long periods of time, which is also not so easy for modern urbanites.

(More here, including a mostly fruitless discussion – pardon the bad pun.)

I can’t create a sea change in how we see our food supply, but I can offer a few tips on the economics of small-space gardening. People shouldn’t have to reinvent the plow to discover gardening’s rewards. Giving authoritative advice feels funny to me, because I’m still a relative newcomer to gardening myself, but these few things I know. Any excellent tips in comments will be boosted into the main post, because I know I have reader who are much more accomplished gardeners than I.

First, grow what you love to eat, but bear in mind that certain veggies offer much more in return for your time and your precious garden space. Tomatoes top the list. Good quality fresh tomatoes will run you a few dollars a pound, maybe more for heirlooms. Most heirlooms are fussier and won’t bear as prolifically as hybrids, but they offer wonderful variety and flavor, so I grow them anyway. But I have some favorite hybrids, too, notably Sungold and Brandy Boy. If I bought as many Sungolds as I harvest, I’d probably spend as much as I lay out for all my vegetable garden supplies (and I tend to go all out on tomato seeds, because I’m greedy for variety).

From Virginia Tech, here’s a nifty ranking of the veggies that give you the best value for your space. The ranking is subject to debate because it depends on how you value and weight labor inputs, space constraints, and of course what you think is yummy. Still, I think it’s basically sound:

• Tomatoes
• Green bunching onions
• Leaf lettuce - and most “gourmet” greens
• Turnip (green + roots)
• Summer squash
• Edible pod peas – shelling peas give you a lot less to chew on, so look for sugar snap varieties
• Onion storage bulbs
• Beans (pole, bush) – but pole beans will keep going
• Beets – don’t forget the greens are yummy
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Peppers
• Broccoli
• Head lettuce
• Swiss chard

I personally am a big fan of chard, as are my resident rabbits. And I just as passionately don’t care how economical turnips are; they’d only be used for lawn bowling around my house. The list doesn’t mention radish, and I don’t either because I dislike it, but you can interplant it among your lettuce. Also, I want to put in a plug for leaf lettuce which, like chard, is cut and come again. Arugula grows like a weed and is pricey in stores but dirt cheap from your garden (pardon another bad pun). If you’re short on sunny patches, virtually all greens can tolerate some shade, whereas fruiting veggies like tomatoes really need at least six hours of sunlight, preferably more.

But oh, did I mention tomatoes are the big win, economically and culinarily?

Grow these plants if space isn’t much of an issue, or if you’ve got kids who really, really want to see a pumpkin grow:

• Corn
• Melons
• Squash
• Pumpkins

Note that the good extension agents must mean sprawling winter squash, because zucchini and other summer squash give you oodles of produce for the space they take. I planted winter squash this year despite my better judgment, and now I have to worry about it becoming the Godzilla of vegetables, tearing down the rest of my garden while I’m out of town.

While they’re not on either list, herbs don’t take much space. You can put them in a planter or window box. If you like to cook (or eat!), they’re really rewarding to grow. Yum basil!

My second tip for keeping things economical is to grow from seed whenever possible. If you don’t have a very well-lit space for seedlings indoors, you might want to buy tomato, pepper, and eggplant starts. (Assuming you can do anything with eggplant, which has always been an utter failure for me.) But it’s just folly to buy starts for melons, squash, pumpkins, or cukes. These seeds germinate easily and it’s fun to watch their big seed leaves unfold. Ditto for beans and peas, which actually resent transplanting. Among the herbs, basil and sage grow easily from seed. Other herbs tend to have tiny seeds, though mint is easy to grow anyway.

And finally, my third bit of advice is to read up a bit on intensive gardening techniques. They let you use the space you have (instead of squandering much of it for paths between rows). Also, by planting closely, you’ll shade out the weeds, though you will still save yourself lots of work if you lay down a good layer of mulch. For more info on intensive techniques, check out square foot gardening (which is useful for deciding how to space plants even if you don’t have all the raised beds, etc.) and that Virginia Tech site.

No, sorry, here’s my real final point: Do as much or as little in your garden as you enjoy. The point is to connect with the earth, get dirty, and enjoy delicious food in the end. If gardening turns into an endless chore, that won’t happen. I thought that the recent article in Alternet arguing that gardeners make better lovers was a bit overblown, but not entirely wrong: Gardening is like sex in that you should get messy, feed your senses, and enjoy it, even if you’re a bit sore the next day.

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I’d Like to Get Some Sleep before I Travel

Tomorrow (well, technically today) I’m headed to Berlin with my kids and husband for our annual German sojourn. Posting will be flaky for a few days while we endure the flight and the intense jet lag that only young children can inflict on their loved ones. (Yes, I will drug them. No, it won’t be enough.)

To fill the void of words, here’s a bit of garden porn – my jackmanii clematis, which looms eight feet above the earth.

And the blossoms, up close:

It’s hard to leave with plants in bloom. I’m leaving a baby zucchini behind (the first I’ve produced in years) and a couple of aggressive winter squash vines that intend to destroy New York and Tokyo after they take out a bunch of my tomatoes.

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Ode to Mulch

I just want to say how much I love mulch. I’m actually not capable of saying much more than that, because I spent most of the afternoon laying it out, and now I’m completely kaput.

This system might not work for everyone; it’s most suited for raised beds that are intensively cultivated. It works great for me. It’ll keep the wilderness at bay while I’m in Germany, and it conserves water, too.

First I put down a couple of layers of newspaper around the plants. This is a fussy job but it results in a great weed barrier. Then my husband and I snake the soaker hose around the bed, using metal garden staples to anchor it. Here are the first two steps, viewed through the chard cage:

The gaps between the newpapers are deliberate, here, because I’ve got some microsopic chard seedling that need to grow. (The basil is in the cage too because that’s just how it worked out.) Elsewhere, I overlap the newspaper sections, sometimes tearing or cutting a notch to go around a plant.

Then we cage the tomatoes. Today that was another two-person job because they’ve grown big. Finally I add a layer of straw, which conceals the newspapers and keeps them from blowing away. The straw also helps with moisture retention.

My summer squash will probably be taken down by squash vine borers before I get back from Germany, but it will die in style. You also see more basil and some pepper plants, as well as potato-leafed tomatoes in the background.

These are more peppers and my purple pole beans.

It’s a buttload of work upfront, but I won’t have to weed this bed for the rest of the season.

And here’s the payoff: blossoms, promising I can has Sungolds.

Now I’m off to watch the start of the fourth season of Weeds, which just came out on DVD.

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