Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Buffon in Jardin des Plantes

Traditions are important in France and change is slow in coming. I was made sad this year to find out that the very hotel that I was recommending when I surprised myself by saying the words, “whenever I’m in Paris”, has changed.  It still lives on a tiny street near the Latin quarter and the Seine, but when I returned to it, trip after trip, it was a modestly priced hotel with tiny, indifferently decorated (but clean) rooms; plumbing that grumbled loudly to get me out of bed in the mornings; weak English-syle coffee with a roll, a croissant, butter and jam, for breakfast; and a friendly manager who spoke English and remembered her customers; even when it was years between visits.  I usually booked with an e-mail saying, “can I still get the same rate?” and the answer was almost always yes.  Sadly, a friend came back to me for another recommendation this year because the rates have more than doubled.  It appears to have changed ownership and become part of a small luxury chain. 

The Left Bank, while a good place for inexpensive hotels and restaurants by Paris standards, has never been the place where people would look first for true luxury accommodations.  The historic old streets are small and noisy, full of the smells of diesel fuel and garlic.  At night, the hawkers in the small streets will stand in the doors of the various ethnic restaurants, music blaring, to try to pull you in for dinner.  The crowds are full of students, emigrants and budget tourists.  But the location has its charms, especially for me.  A short walk to the East, just past the Arab World Institute, and the small Park zoo, is the entrance to one of the most wonderful places in the world, Jardin des Plantes, Paris

The people of Paris use this place (no entrance fee, except for the zoo and museums) as their front porch, their work-out studio, their alternate living room.  Summer, winter, rain or shine, there are always people in this park.  Jogging, walking, sitting, snacking in the cafes.  Rows of benches under the Plane trees create a cool haven in the summer and a comfortable place to sit year-round, to soak in the beauty and the history.  Kings and queens have walked here; in fact it was established as a medicinal garden for a king, hundreds of years ago.  Sitting as close as it does to the historical center of Paris, it’s challenges, reversals and perseverance to become a world-class botanical and scientific resource could fill a book.  But you can see it; soak up its essence, for free.

I highly recommend it as a cure for jet lag.  The overnight flights often drop you off in Paris in the morning, with little or no sleep and an afternoon to fill.  Take a book to the park, wander around and when you get tired, find a comfortable bench.  The light of day will start to reset your clock and the beauties will sooth the soul.

There are a number of gardens, including one that organizes plants by their botanical characteristics; so read up on your interests before you visit or ask for a map at the small gate house.  The rose garden is best in late May or very early June as it contains a number of once blooming varieties, but the main parterres have many roses that last most of the summer.  Most of the pictures in the gallery were taken in the main parterres.

Notice the smoke over Buffon’s right shoulder in the long shot toward the front gate (fourth in the gallery).  There were some particularly vehement protests that day; I saw worried police everywhere on my way to the gardens but I was oblivious to the cause until I heard the noise, and saw that night’s news.  Explosions, smoke, screaming loudspeakers and sirens as the protests passed the park, but inside it was an island of tranquility.[oqeygallery id=20]

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Lettuce under LED lights, week two

Lettuces under normal light
Lettuces under normal light

The lettuces continue to put on mass.  The red colors in Yogoslavian Red (heading lettuce) are showing up nicely but it’s also the slowest growing.  And I cannot see a visible difference between Australian Yellow and Simpson Elite (with toothpicks). 

I split the soil cubes between two flats to give them more room and now I do a littly dosie doe with the flats every day to move the outside lettuces closer to the light. Fertilized again; I will drop back to once a month now, I think.

Just to recap, for people who stumble accross this post first:  Lettuces planted 10/23; sprouts show by 10/27; lights out and no heat 10/29-11/3; put under LED array on 11/8.  See Week One and It Begins for more history.

I ordered some “Red Sails” from Pinetree Seeds, an easier red leaf lettuce and I’ll start my next batch as soon as they arrive.  Hopefully, this weekend.

lettuces under LED array

Lettuce under LED lights – one week

Simpson Elite
Simpson Elite

The lettuces are definately adding mass, one week after the LED array was set up.  They didn’t get their first feed until yesterday:  Miracle Grow at the package strength.  (Sorry OGL folks, I promise, the next batch will be in a mix that includes compost.)  I forgot how little water seedlings grown in relatively cool conditions need; they should have been feed a week ago.

I’ve worried over the height of the lights and can’t find relevant information. 

Yugoslavian Red
Yugoslavian Red

The 90 watt light is supposed to cover a surface of four square feet.  At 12-18″ away, the Yogoslavian Red lettuces at the end of the flat seem to be straining for the light.  But they are showing some color.  Too much of this light, I read, can hurt small seedlings.  But I haven’t found a description of what that harm looks like, either.  There is a good reason that I call this an experiment.

At least for the next week, I’ll leave the light centered about 12′ above the flat, moving the flat daily so that each end is closer on alternate days.

lettuces week one
lettuces week one

Lettuce under LED lights – the experiment begins

lettuce sprout
lettuce sprout

I started lettuces on 10/23 and they were just showing green, under my usual florescent bulb starting mechanisms, when the power went out for five days.  I was worried that the sprouts would be too leggy and get my trials with an LED array off to a bad start, but after watching for a few days, these look fine.  I guess that the cooler house temperatures also slowed development. 

The light is an Illuminator UFO 5-Band Tri-Spectrum LED grow light.  I vaguely thought that I would start with simple lettuces but the leftovers from last spring didn’t really offer that choice, except for Simpson Elite, a popular leaf lettuce, so I started two rows of it.  And a row each (four 2″ soil cubes) of Australian Yellow (leaf) and Yugoslavian Red, my favorite heading lettuce.  A row of Red Velvet didn’t germinate for some reason, I have had that problem before with that seed; this was a replacement pack. Thus, the empty cubes in the last picture.

In spite of plans to take advantage of extra basement space with a well-designed setup, in my usual haphazard way, I stuck the light in the guest/junk room.  It uses the very sophisticated setup that I use in spring, two cross country skis over the tops of chairs and chains to hang the lights.  I left one florescent fixture in place for times when I want to work with the lettuces.  In just the time it takes me to get from the door to the outlet to unplug the LED array, my eyes are already complaining about the lurid pink glow. And everything is green while your eyes recover.

the setup
the setup

If anyone has advice about how long these lights should be on for lettuce, please speak up.  I keep the seed starting lights on for 16 hours a day but I think that may be too long for these.  Also, I suspect that day length has something to do with lettuce “heading up” so I’m thinking I should plan for some room to increase hours for that heading lettuce when it gets bigger.  I have been warned that lettuces grown under low lights could have dangerous levels of nitrates, and did some reading on that.  I do not know if “low light” applies to LED arrays.  And about the only plans I have to deal with this is to use a low nitrogen fertilizer and get one of my lettuces tested at harvest time.  I’ve also read that foods that have this problem taste bad so, guess what!  I won’t eat them if they taste bad!

lettuce under LED array
lettuce under LED array

Seriously!

October snow
October snow

On hearing about my last week, a few people have said they couldn’t imagine being five days without power.  For me, this was just one day more than our power outage in the ice storm of 2008, but yeah, before that, I couldn’t have imagined it either.  A freind said I should share.  I was a bit reluctant and tried to figure out why.  During 2008 outage, I had just read Solviva, and in my head, developed so many ideas about how I could improve on this old, drafty house.  A passive hot water system on the sunny side of the house; augmented by a redesigned fireplace that heats water as it’s used; a more elaborate, covered, outdoor cooking area.  Dream on!  The truth is that after that storm, I spent thousands of dollars remodling a bathroom in the back of the house where a pipe may have burst in the cold, and life went on.  That was a once in a lifetime, right?

So my house is still drafty and energy inefficient, I never use the fireplace so I don’t dare try it in an emergency, even just to get some radiant heat.  I don’t have double paned windows or even curtains on some of them.  So I guess I should write about this like I write about my garden.  How the rest of us do it, those who dream big but never get around to implementing the plan; who manage anyway.

First, I was gifted in 2008 with some of my most important tools:  a propane burner and tank and two boxes of votive candles, one with votive holders.  (Sister had loaned me her burner in the 2008 storm and I’d used every old candle in my collection.)  The ability to make your own coffee or heat up some soup, or just a kettle of water to wash, is key to feeling as if you can cope.  The other two important tools were my i-Phone and a battery run indoor/outdoor thermometer.  Any PDA that lets you check weather and news and text or call family will do. 

The lights went out on Saturday night and on Monday morning, the towns nearby were still closed down tightly.  Rumor (text messages) had it that places: groceries, gas stations, had tried to open on battery/generator on Sunday; the fact that they’d given up told me we were in for a long outage.  And rumor had it that trees were blocking roads everywhere and had to be removed.  So priorities change; give up on getting into work and  focus on staying warm and protecting the house.  At first the differential between indoor and outdoor heat was enough that I just kept things closed up, and started burning those votives.  When I moved to the bedroom for the night, all of the burning candles came with me.  As the indoor temps became closer to outdoor temps, afternoons were spent heating water in all my biggest cooking pots to bring inside.  I’d fire up the grill and boil water, cooking dinner before the charcoal burned out. 

Food was no problem; I ate well.  I keep what I call “winter meats” on hand, things like a can of corned beef hash, which includes beans and other protiens but the first days were spent using stuff from the freezer and eggs.  It’s a small freezer, fortunately, as everything left in there has to go.  And I gave up on the eggs about Tuesday.  A yam, baked in foil on the grill, tucked in around the boiling water, was the sweetest I’ve had in ages and I wonder if the higher heat carmelized sugars in a way that the oven would not have done.  And I was not cold.  Whenever I wasn’t working, I was under a pile of blankets and three cats.  The cats came to appreciate me as a source of heat, as well as food and affection.  Living bodies generate a lot of heat on their own so preserving it and sharing it goes a long way.  The nightime temps got lower every night, but 46 degrees F was the lowest; not that bad.  Outside, we had a 26 deg F night that got me worrying about the darn pipes, so running water through that back bathroom periodically became a serious task.  Ironically, the plumber did such a good job on the faucets that I couldn’t get them to drip. 

But it was not a walk in the park.  Between the things I need to do to keep my job and the things I like to do, there never seems to be enough time.  So watching the week slip by when I couldn’t make progress on either front was frustrating.  And yet there was plenty of time four coulda, shouldas and wouldas.  Pergatory for a procrastinator like me.  I hadn’t even thought to get cash like my father taught me, although the gas tank was pretty full. 

But that’s probably not the way to think about it.  Here’s what I want to share with you: 

  • Make some simple preparations, canned food, a propane burner and a box or two of votive candles are cheap.
  • Use what you have; I hadn’t thought about charcoal and ligher fluid as survival tools but that’s what I had in 2008 and now I know.
  • Keep your gas tank full and cash on hand, especially when the weatherman says a storm is coming.
  • Recognize that priorities change and we have to embrace the moment:  hug a cat (or other warm body); read that book on the coffee table: drink that third cup of coffee just because it’s warm.
Why the power went out
Deck side of house
Deck side of house
Nieghbor's House, notice the tree on the stoop.
Nieghbor's House, notice the tree on the stoop.
Wasp's nest still there!
Wasp's nest still there!