Simply Belle

New York, London, or Gay Parie? Hardly. Stephanie Mae grew up in a small town in rural Arizona. There,  in the rarefied mountain air, she composed many of the tunes you find on her CD, Pokerface.

It started one afternoon while life guarding at the municipal pool. She discovered that the melodic splashing of all the twittering, laughing children somehow instilled in her mind the basis of the tune, “At The Edge.” Then, While washing dishes one evening, she put together a few bars of ” Crazy” to the musical background of pots and pans scraping against the sink. And as a president of the high school Key Club, the tune Poker Face found its way into her assembly while she was listening to the clanking of donations dropping onto assorted piles. On these occasions, she would rush home to her piano and finish composing her new songs while they were still fresh in her mind.

As time went on, her passion for music gripped her so deeply that at any moment, she might set the piano to jumping and the walls to shaking when she pounded away at the ivories. Members of the family would have to flee to the far corners of the house to protect their ears. Are those signs of a genius?

It is often said that music and mathematics are interrelated. And when a person is exceptional in one branch of knowledge, she might do well in the other. So it is true with Stephanie Mae. Her aptitude for mathematics earned her a scholarship at Stanford University where she is currently pursuing, of all things, a degree in Bio Mechanical Engineering! Well, a girl has to earn a living, doesn’t she? But you can bet that she crams in plenty of music appreciation courses into her busy schedule. And she spends quality time with her friends in the Every Day People A Capella choir.

Stephanie Mae is now in her senior year and can’t wait to graduate. She plans to start her own recording studio where in her free time after work, she can sing and burn CDs to her heart’s content. Bravo! We expect to see and hear a lot more of Stephanie’s extensive talents in the near future. That is, unless she plans to go to grad school. Stay tuned.

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took these pictures late this afternoon

Have you had your fair share of blustery snow storm yet? In my neck of the wood, we are expecting our first dose of it anytime soon which is supposed to last a week. Yesterday, while I was visiting my daughter, Lexi, in a 7,000-foot altitude city, I heard people talking about it, which made me worry a bit. I don’t care for snow at all. Yes, snow is a beautiful sight to behold, but for a working woman like me, there aren’t words to describe how much I abhor snow especially my kind of work requires me to be on the road most of the time. I do uphold the slogan, “neither rain nor rain nor sleet nor hail shall keep Belle from doing her rounds.”

So, count your blessings if you have the choice to stay by the cozy fireplace, sipping a cup of hot tea or cocoa on a cold winter day.

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Wow, it has been a while I haven’t updated my blog, and I haven’t paid a visit to any of my friends’ blogs either. Nothing is wrong from my end, except that I have been overly busy with job and other important stuff. Hope all is well with you all.

Anyway, the other day, on my way home from work, I thought of having a hearty neck bone soup for dinner. We have been having a cooler weather here so a soup dish would be a good idea and would definitely stick to our ribs.

The moment I got home, I shouted to my husband. He seemed to be nowhere in the house. So, I looked for him outside, and sure enough, he was out there wheel borrowing a load of soil up to the garden area.

Me: Could you get me a white cabbage please?

S: How many?

Me: Just one plant.

He brought me a single plant but turned to be an arm load…hehe

typical salad on a daily basis

Lately, we have been eating tons of vegetables and plenty of fresh crisp salad. Sometimes, it is too much of a good thing that we have to give a lot of them away. Sometimes, we give our tummy a rest and skip a day of eating veggies. And after a day’s rest, we crave for it.

The cold weather doesn’t seem to hinder the growth of the plants. Some, like the lettuces, spinach, kale, asian cabbage, and even the mache are exploding. The brocolli raab which is one of the better tasting vegetables, is doing extremely well. We never expected that the plants would survive in the cooler weather, down in the 20’s.

So far, we haven’t bought that much vegetables since summer. The ones I buy from Oriental store in Phoenix now and then, stay in the other refrigerator until they spoil. And my husband throws them eventually in the compost pit. I think our garden would last through winter and continues until May. By then most of the plants will bolt. And then comes the beginning of the summer garden which includes the melon, tomatoes, beans, eggplant, peppers, etc.

Now, we just prove that there is no reason for people to go hungry. And it doesn’t even require a huge garden space to produce an ample supply of vegetables.

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On Halloween’s day, my husband and I decided to abandon the tricker treaters, left the house in total darkness, and headed up to the place called Monument Valley, located just south of Utah border and Arizona, near the four corners area, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico touch.

Monument Valley boasts of beautiful rock formations that were slowly revealed through erosion some 50 million years ago, producing one of the most majestic and photographed landscapes on earth. It’s where many motion pictures were filmed, like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Once Upon a Time in the West, Marlboro commercials, to name a few.

We didn’t get to explore the valley because the tour cost a little too much, and we didn’t feel like spending our hard-earned money on pricey tour. Yes, there might have been more to see down the valley, but that can wait until later when we go back there again.

This time, I would like to share with you, my blogger friends and readers, the Monument Valley.

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The cheaper way costs $10.68 including tax, and

The expensive way cost $325 plus tax plus you get a free bracelet.

Get the drift?

My husband and I had been wanting to visit the Petrified Wood forest so we took advantage of the tail end of the warm weather to visit the place. There were only two entrances available to get to the place; the south side and the north side.  We entered the north entrance. The inspection lady at the entrance asked us if we had any petrified woods that we might have bought from somewhere prior to going in.  We said No! She reiterated that if we had them in our possession, she would like to put them in a brown bag and label them accordingly and hold them for us. Also, she gave us adequate warning not to pick up rocks, petrified woods, plants, or animals inside the territory.

Which got us to thinking.

We drove about 25 miles into the road, and saw tons of petrified wood scattered all over. Petrified wood is a wood that turns into rock through the process of petrification and it dates back millions years ago. If you look closely at the pictures, the original cell structure of the woods is retained; grain is very visible.  Petrified wood can be made into jewelry, and beautiful ornamental and decorative nicknacks and furniture like coffee table with prices ranging from $500 to $5,000.

In one instance, I had to make a little detour and walk closer to the wood to get close up pictures and to satisfy my curiosity if, indeed, the wood is as hard as rock by touching it with my bare hands. It was solid rock, alright, and very heavy. I was fascinated just thinking of the million of years it took for the woods to get petrified.

We saw rocks of all sizes. There were shattered logs here and there from the side of the road that one can easily get tempted to pick, and take them home for souvenirs.  And there were not a whole lot of people to deter one from picking one either. There were no barbed wires to stop people from walking close to the rocks. One can easily succumb to temptations at any given time.

The devil tried to persuade me, but the angel convinced me otherwise. All I took out were tons of pictures.

As we are nearing the exit gate, about 5 miles away, I saw a sign that said, “vehicle inspection ahead.” Had I picked one, I would have thrown it right away to the side of the road right there and then. I didn’t want to get caught with those rocks in my possession and go through all the humiliations, paying a harsh penalty, and maybe go into my record for federal offense.

We stopped at the gate, and expected to be searched rigorously by the guard. But, he just looked and smiled  at us, and said “have a good day!” Huh? How would they know we were not hiding something? That baffled me.

After we passed the gate, I asked my husband to stop at the gift shop, just so I could look at the gift items available for sale. I went in there with burning question in my mind as to why they didn’t search me. I posed that question to the sales lady at the gift shop. She said, “if you are not reported, they will not apprehend you.” “You mean, there are hidden people who are watching everybody in there?” I asked. “Yes, using all kinds of detectors and satellites, and what not”, the lady answered.  We were not informed about these surveillances. The visitors’ honesty was really tested, and in many cases greed wins out as the lady said that they nab gobs of people everyday. The government is finally running their affairs profitably, I must say…he he.

Phew! If you ever visit the Petrified Wood National Park, be aware of the costly consequences plus the humiliation, and the hand cuffing involved……even for a piece of little dark rock that is of no value.

By the way, I bought that piece of petrified wood that you see at the top of the page as souvenir. If someday, I acquire lapidary machines, I will have my husband carve it into jewelry.

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Our summer garden got frost out because of unexpected frost at 27 degrees not too long ago. We didn’t have the chance to cover the beds with the poly greenhouse plastic. Even the next batch of vegetables from the other bed which is supposed to be cold hardy also got hit by the frost. Luckily, most of them were able to survive. The next day, we immediately covered the vegetables with the plastic to minimize the damage and to protect the garden from further frost, possible hail, or other severe weather.  We live at 5000-foot elevation so we get a lot of early morning frost around end of October. Also, we live in an area where weather can be unpredictable. One day, it is nice and warm, the next day, it is freezing cold.

Lately, I haven’t been visiting the garden because I have been coming home late, and also, I have been busy with my yoga, late appointments, and Bible study. Today though, I came home on time, and while still in my uniform, I rushed straight to the garden.  The last time I saw them, they were recuperating from the frost. I thought I would take a peek and see how the veggies are doing. Boy, was I in for a big surprise.

Take a look:

Chinese cabbage

Bloomsdale spinach

Thumb-thumb lettuce (right), and Grand rapid lettuce (left)

Turnips

Kale – frost worst hit as shown in the picture.

I couldn’t believe the transformation of the plants from few days ago. They look so healthy and vigorous, and have gotten huge. My husband said that he gave them a drink of compost tea.  Yes, a compost tea that he brewed for about a day and a half out of hay, cow’s manure, kitchen’s waste products, and whatever he could find. Even used tea bags and banana peel get thrown in.  It is truly what I call an organic gardening. Not a bad thing to have in the sunny spot of your backyard.

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Two weeks ago, my husband, Lexi, and I went on a trip in a far-away corner of Arizona, about a day drive including bathroom and shopping stops. My husband had been wanting to see this mecca in the middle of high country of Arizona, kind of a wind-swift, treeless, nondescript countryside, with only occasional shrubs growing. I never heard or seen this before, unlike Grand Canyon which is famous worldwide.

We thought that it would help Lexi to get out of the house and get her mind occupied on something. We bought a tent for Lexi and I to sleep in while my husband had the car to himself. We brought everything we needed to get by comfortably including firewood.  We love sitting next to a fire, sipping a cup of tea and at the same time enjoying the dark surrounding with occasional uninvited visits from the bugs.

While I was preparing dinner, Lexi volunteered to assemble the tent, and my husband unloaded the truck. I was especially thrilled that Lexi offered to do a semi-challenging task of setting up a brand new tent given her condition. And she did amazingly well in no time with zero help.

Sleeping in a tent was quite comfortable with queen-sized air mattress spread over the tent floor and comfortable pillows, quilts and blankets to keep us warm. I was sleeping like a log until I heard this  squeaking noise from behind us at 3 AM.  It was my husband re-inflating his mattress because evidently it had a pinhole somewhere that deflated  the mattress slowly over the night.  I was pretty sure he wasn’t happy about it, but it was either get up and inflate the bed or sleep on the cold ridges of the truck floor in the wee hours of a very cold morning. What would you rather do?

Got up at 7:30 AM and shortly thereafter, we drove 12 miles to see Canyon De Chelly. Lexi didn’t want to wake up that early no matter how hard I tried to get her to come with us. We had no choice but to leave her in the tent with a promise to be back in 2 hours, instead of waiting for her to get up for who knows how long and by then it would be scorching hot in the canyon. It was so beautiful up there, so many interesting things to focus my camera that we lost touch of time, and before we knew it, the clock said 12:30 PM….oooopssss!!

Lexi was fuming mad and made us drive her up there again taking the south side route as we already covered the north side. It took a while before her anger subsided.

Canyon De Chelly is totally a wondrous place. I was mesmerized by its pure natural beauty. Nearly 5,000 years ago, Navajo Indians lived here.  It was such a beautiful place filled with spectacular rock formations, and green luscious trees in between canyons. So beautiful that I rank it second behind Grand Canyon. Sadly though when the Canyon was established as a monument in 1931, people had to be relocated in the higher elevation though some still own a farm where they grow apples, peaches, and corn. In fact, I had a chance to talk to one of the Navajos (picture below) who used to live down there and I could tell how proud she was of the place she called home many years ago.  She now sells affordable home-made jewelry made out of juniper seeds, and some stones.

Although, the Canyon is under the jurisdiction of the US government, it belongs to the Navajo people who I considered the most industrious, artistic, and skillful, of all the indians in the USA.

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sweet and juicy persimmons – make excellent salsa, too.

Just because we live in Arizona, where scorching heat is a plenty, and rain is scarce, doesn’t mean we are unable to enjoy organic gardening.  Particularly now that organic vegetables are not only expensive but very limited, and some varieties are hard to find because of modern agriculture in which vegetables are grown for their appearance, shelf-life, and not for their taste and nutrients, these babies are delicious and refreshing treat. For example, the freshly ripened figs have only a shelf-life of 3 days and bruise easily on shipment, and so you rarely see these in the market. Yet, they taste mightily awesome especially when eaten fresh. I don’t care though for the dried ones and the fig newton cookies, which are considered processed figs. Nothing can really beat tree-ripened fruits, more so if they are raised from your own garden.

Earlier, in one of my blog posts, I explained methodically the mechanics on how to build a raised bed for those of you who may be interested. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t hard either. It involves cunning and hardwork, lots of hauling gravel, dirt, manure, and hays. Results are phenomenal as shown in the pictures below.

We expect to have an all-year-round gardening even on the harsh winter days this year. Yes, we do get snow as it can get down to zero here, but the good thing is, it warms up during the day time which is essential to growing plants. Right now, we are using a 40% to 50% shade cloth to cut down the heat because most plants simply can’t bear sweltering heat of Arizona. Eventually, when the weather gets colder and below freezing point, we will replace the shade with the plastic cover, which will then resemble a green house. Of course, we had to carefully select the cold-tolerant plants like kale, lettuces, radicchio, and many more. It is like a trial and error to see which ones grow best in our climate. We did this before many many years ago, and I remember having supply of organic salad in the cold winter months. You can’t beat that, right?

Anyway, without further ado, let me show you our garden.

chard- eat your heart out guys.

carrots

this bed supplies us with fresh veggies every other day, and now and then, to some of my friends.

one of my favorite vegetables- spinach

Chinese lettuce ready for harvest by end of October

there are probably 15 kinds of veggies planted in this bed which has inside dimensions of 32 feet by 4.4 feet.

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Gardening in Arizona is extremely tough because not only do we have to worry about the extreme sunlight, dry temperature, and lack of rain, we also have to deal with hungry critters that will eat the young plants right down to the ground. Our worst enemy though is the scorching heat and dry climate because it cooks the seeds before they even have a chance to sprout up. We also have the elk that comes at night and can jump over any fence below 8 feet, the quail that likes to peck on the baby plants, the huge and fat grasshopper, a bevy of hungry birds, and other creatures we don’t even see. So, what do you do? Give up?

That is what we did for a while when the gophers practically demolished every single plant in the garden last year. It was a devastating feeling knowing that our gardening days were over. My husband even thought of moving to another state like Oregon which boasts of mild climate, and deep-top soil – a gardener’s paradise. But, we invested so much time and effort on this garden, we can’t just give up and leave, right? There must be another way of beating all the odds, thus, the idea of raised bed came to mind.

I tell you, it isn’t easy. It is a back breaking job. First, my husband dug down below ground level, spread the hardware cloth to ward off gopher, and laid the cement blocks three layers high. Then he filled the bottom with rocks for drainage, followed by a combination of sand, top soil, and compost. We had this compost pile for years and finally found a use for it. A very very rich soil, I must say. The idea of including the sand is for the water to penetrate down to the roots instead of settling on the surface and because of our dry weather, it evaporates in no time.

Let me tell you first how pocket gophers operate. They remind me of the Taliban fighters-very clever. They build a centralized hole underground and from it, they branch out and create tunnels all over, and cover the end of the tunnels with soil to conceal them from the gardener.Hmmm, I am beginning to think that Taliban must have gotten the idea of underground operation from these creatures. Notice the similarities? So, when you finally spot a hole, you try to stick a piece of lean wood to try to corner them, but they just go to the next tunnel and exit at the other end. Just like the Taliban, they are extremely hard to fight because they attack from underground engaging in a methodical and perplexed operation. So frustrating!

Anyway, going back to my story:

Seeing that the first bed was doing extremely well, it gave my husband the inspiration to build a much larger one. He has been working on it for about a month now and is only half way through. In other words, he had the bed built but hasn’t filled it up yet. Two days ago, I talked him into visiting our friends’ garden in Roosevelt (an hour-drive from home), and gladly obliged with the utility trailer hooked behind our truck. He said since we were going to that direction, he might as well haul some cow’s manure for the second bed.

When we got there, he said, “honey, i brought an extra shovel just in case you want to help.” “Huh, I am not wearing the right shoes!” I squalled. And I am talking about temperature in the 100’s with practically no humidity! But I relented, and started shoveling away filling up the front side while my husband took care of the back side.

Here are the pictures:

You see the flip-flop I was wearing? Definitely not suitable for shoveling.

A shade cloth is used to cut down 40% of the sunlight, and to help keep most of the insects out and the soil from drying out fast.

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We were invited over at our friends’ house for a last get-together for this year before they head back to WA. to spend the summer. These are retired people who own two homes – one in AZ where they spend the winter to get away from the dark-cold-wet days of Seattle, and one in WA, which offers beautiful weather and long nights during summer.

I usually take charge of the kitchen when I come over. I made eggrolls and pansit.

FYI: I was wearing shorts and a long shirt. Even my husband asked, “do you have anything underneath that shirt?”

Boy, I haven’t even finished deep frying the eggrolls, two of my friends couldn’t seem to get their hands off the cooked eggrolls. For the other gentleman, it was his first time to eat eggroll, and he loved it so much!

Don’t you just love watching them attack the food? It made me feel good as a cook.

And let me show you the weirdness out of this gentleman.

He added catsup to his pansit. Yuck!

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