Author: Karen GoatKeeper

Karen GoatKeeper loves to write. Her books include picture books, novels and nonfiction for science activity books and nature books. A recent inclusion are science teaching units.
The coming year has goals for two new novels, a picture book and some books of personal essays. This is ambitious and ignores time constraints.
She lives in the Missouri Ozarks with her small herd of Nubian dairy goats. The Ozarks provides the inspiration and setting for most of her books.

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Latest From High Reaches

Rain Inducement

Ozark rains have taken on a new form. Several months will have lots of clouds, rain several days a week. No rain inducement is needed, only overwatering protection for the garden.

Then clouds roll by dropping small showers, enough for seedlings only, for a couple of months. Larger plants need watering even with mulch.

Watering My Garden

The only well near my garden is a hand dug one. It has a hand pump on it and is reliable for watering the animals, but not for watering the garden.

Four rain barrels are full in the garden. One is full of tadpoles. Other tadpoles get moved into this one. This year it takes two full barrels to water my garden once.

tomato plants need a gallon of water a day once they start producing
The mulch helps hold moisture in the ground and keeps the tomato plant roots cool. The mulch also makes it harder to judge how much water is needed, attracts worms which attract moles and raccoons.

My Solution

The creek runs all year. We set up a pump near the creek and pump water up to the garden to fill the barrels.

Once the plants get big enough, the pump sill water them too. But discharge hoses tend to dig up seedlings.

Rain Inducement

Today the pump got set up. The hoses are laid out. The creek bed is dug out for a nice pool under the intake for the pump.

operating the water pump sometimes works as a rain inducement
The pump draws water from a creek. this makes it necessary to dig out a hole to make sure the intake is low enough to stay submerged. The screen over the intake is to keep small creatures like that fish from being pulled into the pump.

And today the clouds are rolling in teasing me with indications of rain. This is after spending two hours yesterday lugging watering cans around to water the seedlings and transplants.

Will I Gripe?

If the clouds decide to drop an inch of rain on my garden, I will definitely not complain. The pump may be set up and ready, but it will still be there in a few days, after the rain has gone by and gotten used up by the plants. Gardening season is just getting going and water will be needed a couple of times a week for several months.

And spending hours watering is the only other rain inducement I have left for now.

Note: The pump worked. A shower came by dropping a half inch.

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GKP Writing News

Wrapping Up Loose Ends

As both a writer and a person growing old, I find more and more of my life is spent wrapping up loose ends. There are so many projects close to done waiting for those final bits of effort.

Why Not Finish Things?

Mostly projects get left behind when circumstances change. Another factor can be a change in life’s focus. And projects can lose their appeal, get boring.

Some projects do get done and then need repairs. Puppies do a lot of damage to quilts. Time to do those needed repairs never seems to get worked into the schedule so the project lingers, undone.

One I’m trying to make presentable as I will never fully finish it, is a tea cloth. What, you ask, is a tea cloth? Truthfully, I didn’t know when I started this project.

literally wrapping up loose ends in tatting
Shuttle tatting is slow. Real tatting thread is about the size of quilting thread. I prefer using size 30 thread as the result is still lacy, but I make progress faster. Many patterns do call for the larger thread. I did this tea cloth in separate parts as much as possible. To explain: the outside sets of three medalions have two smaller outside ones and a big one joining them. I tatted all of the smaller ones then did the bigger center one joining them into eight units. These were joined to the cloth when the chain around the inserts was done. The triangular tatted sections were completed and joined with the chain as well. The inserts were the last things to sew in.

Challenges

A friend taught me to tat when I was attending UCLA. I had these classes right after lunch and kept falling asleep. Tatting kept me awake, but left me able to take notes too.

Tatting is a way of making lace. I learned to use a shuttle, not the more modern needle tatting some people do now.

I enjoyed tatting, acquired books of patterns, made lots of stuff. Most tatting patterns are for bookmarks and doilies. I got bored and wanted a challenge.

There was my challenge, the picture in the center of a new book. Tea cloth. One hundred fifty different designs for the various parts. Perfect.

Wrapping Up Loose Ends

A tea cloth is a small tablecloth. My mostly finished one is six feet across. All the designs are done. The cloth inserts are tacked in.

There are some two thousand knots left to secure with a needle and clip ends. A good ironing is needed to take out the wrinkles. And neither will happen.

Instead, I am tacking my tea cloth between two clear plastic sheets. I want something different as a cloth under my book display and this will be it. After all, with forty years of off-and-on effort to get this far and a lack of anyplace else to show this off, it will now come out of the closet.

What Else?

Since this project is done, I need to tackle another one. There are two quilt tops in the cedar chest. The spool knitted throw needs puppy repairs.

And, maybe I’ll get around to wrapping up loose ends of writing projects sitting on my computer.

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Leftover Seedlings

Much of my garden is planted. The seedlings I raised are settled in. And now I look at the leftover seedlings looking so good, begging for a chance.

Brave Tomato Seedlings

There are the tomato seedlings. I presently have a dozen purchased plants and two dozen growing in designated spaces. That totals three dozen plants for two people, two older people who don’t eat that much.

And there are the leftover seedlings. Over a dozen of them sit in their little cups doing their best to make me feel guilty. Surely there is room for us they seem to say.

Leftover tomato seedlings
All of my tomato seedlings are indeterminent types so much of the long stem can be buried. These will develop adventicious roots to create sturdier plants and provide additional water and nutients. They just need a chance and a spot in a garden.

Determined Peppers

My garden has a double line of bell peppers along with eight more in two containers. Luckily that is all the bell pepper seedlings I had, all forty-four of them.

However I also have my long sweet peppers. These are confined to containers, four to a container. That adds another thirty-two plants.

My leftover seedlings look so good. I’m considering buying a couple more containers to plant a few more.

leftover pepper seedling
These pepper seedlings are getting too big. Their roots are starting to get pot bound. This will stunt the plants. I’m searching for places to put some of them. Maybe someone will want to take them home and plant them.

And All the Rest

How many parsley and Chinese celery plants do I need? How much room is there left in my garden? Then there are the pot marigolds or calendulas.

There are numerous seeds to put in as well. Already the okra, lima beans, several squashes and sunflowers have germinated. Maybe I can tuck a few leftover seedlings between their rows.

Size Matters

As I look around my garden wondering where I can tuck in yet another seedling, I have to remind myself about these small plants. They do not stay small.

That little tomato seedling a foot tall will become a six-foot tall mass of vine. Those little squash seedlings putting out their first leaves will have vines forty feet long plus. Inch tall basil plants will turn into three foot bushes.

Those leftover seedlings plus my planned vegetables will turn my garden into its usual jungle. But that great tasting produce makes it worthwhile.

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GKP Writing News

Creating Teaching Units

As a teacher, I was always creating teaching units. Each chapter became one as I found or devised notes, work sheets, labs and more.

Once I started writing science books, this changed. The elements stayed the same. However, I could add so much more.

Trivia is interesting. My first science book “The Pumpkin Project” is full of fun facts about pumpkins.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
This science activity book includes Investigations and Activites from pumpkin seeds to plants to pumpkins. Stories about growing pumpkins, recipes using pumpkins, puzzles about pumpkins, pumpkin trivia and more are in it too.

Telling Stories

The trivia led me on to other interesting things about pumpkins. Since I garden, I buy those little seed packets. This book let me find out how those seeds get into the packets.

Then there are the giant pumpkins. These are not the big Halloween kinds. These are the monsters grown by people around the world that can easily top a hundred pounds with records now over a ton! Who grows these and how? I asked and wrote a story about them.

Creating Puzzles

Teaching classes I often used worksheets. These didn’t seem to fit well in my science book. I put in puzzles instead.

There are sites online to create puzzles. I prefer to make my own. Hidden words, skeletons, tales, deduction and sayings are some of them.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Water is an interesting chemical. It is essential for health too. This science activity book includes 8 stories along with many Investigations and Activities about and using water. Puzzles, trivia and more are also in the book.

“The City Water Project”

Writing about pumpkins was so interesting I looked over my teaching units and found some about water. There are so many interesting things about water, this substance we depend on, but take for granted.

Using the same model, the book has lots of trivia, stories, puzzles (including coloring pages), investigations and activities. Since this was not for a class lab, I could include some activities like boiling water in a paper boat that I couldn’t use in school.

Creating Teaching Units

Few people were interested in my science books. This was very disappointing to me. Part of it was that few people knew about them. Part of it was how much the books had to cost to cover printing costs.

I loved teaching science. I want others to discover how interesting science is. So I am trying to make my science books more accessible by making them into teaching units.

What I’ve discovered is that I can’t just break up a book into units. As I separate each part, I have to make sure my results and puzzle answers are there. Each has an introduction.

Summer is the time to play with water. Maybe some people will enjoy doing these Investigations, Activities and puzzles this summer and find out science can be fun.

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Resident Black Snakes

All winter the mice living under my barn floor have been living the high life as I presently have no barn cat. This ends in the spring when the resident black snakes return for the summer.

I had resorted to setting mouse traps as the mice were skittering across the barn floor as I milked. One was eating in the feed bucket while I milked, leaving when I walked over and returning to eat when I walked away. Several fled from the chicken feeder every time I opened the door.

What Are Black Snakes Worth?

The first of these black snakes arrived when rats had invaded the barn. It took a couple of years, but the snakes got rid of the rats.

Now the mice are disappearing for the summer. They are still there, but their populations are going down. They only come out at night.

One of the returning resident black snakes
Most people living here would drive over this old black snake. I usually appreciate having my resident black snakes. The gravel is just wide enough for two cars to pass and this snake stretches out almost two thirds of the road. Its body is as thick as my forearm. It is one of two this size living under my barn over the summer.

How Big Is That Snake?

Some of the resident black snakes were already under the barn. I’d seen them. So it was a surprise to find one of my big ones stretched out across the road when I pulled up to unload feed.

The snake was between me and my parking spot. It had to move. It had no intention of moving.

Small, up to about three feet long, will vanish quickly if prodded. Larger ones start defying the urging to move. This one, at around seven feet, ignored the car, ignored stomping on the road and coiled up when prodded.

The snake put on a display, beating its tail on the gravel, opening its mouth and refusing to budge. I used a stick to flip it over and over getting it closer to the side of the road.

defensive black snake
This snake was relaxing in warmth and didn’t want to move. When urged, the snake coiled in a defensive posture. It never tried to strike, only intimidate. Having inhabited my barn for many years, this snake is accustomed with people. Still, it would not be a good idea to try to pick it up.

Company Arrives

A car stopped behind my truck. The driver got out to see what was going on. He and his companion were teenagers on their way to the river.

Exclamations of amazement were yelled back and forth as the two of us used sticks to lift the snake over to the fence. It promptly decided to head for the safety of the barn.

So now all my resident black snakes have arrived for the summer. Two seven foot, one six foot and a new five foot snake now chase the mice. And, yes, they do snack on the eggs when I don’t get them picked up several times a day.

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Crazy Weather

Gardening is getting to be a big challenge. This isn’t due to age or time constraints. It has to do with crazy weather.

Midwest weather is changeable. Every season argues with the next one resisting its ouster. But this crazy weather has gone beyond that.

Rain and Drought

Floods came in May. A six-inch rain fell overnight or over a day and the creek rose. The next day the waters settled lower.

Now floods come any month of the year. They don’t take a six-inch rain as even a couple of inches pouring down in an hour or two brings the creek up.

These sudden floods tear out the creek banks. They undermine big trees. Most of the water runs off down to the river.

These rainy times give way to dry weeks to months. Often the dry spells take plants to the edge of survival before another rainy time moves in. This too will be followed by a dry time.

The Ozarks traditionally does have hot, dry summers. However, the new wet dry cycles may or may not fall into the old patterns.

Cold, Wet Springs

I love growing potatoes. It’s not that I can’t buy potatoes in the market or that I prefer some exotic variety. It’s that I love growing potatoes.

Spuds do like cool weather, but not cold weather. They need to get planted in March to beat the summer heat.

Now cold March weather keep them from growing. Frosts keep nipping any brave sprouts off. By the time the plants can finally grow, it’s late April and summer hits.

I no longer grow potatoes.

crazy weather allows snow peas and lettuce time to grow
Cool weather crops like snow peas and lettuce are lucky to survive long in an Ozark spring. This year the temperatures flirted with 80, but are staying in the 70s. Those flowers say I may actually harvest some snow peas this year.

Summer Crops

Every plant takes a certain amount of time to grow and bear fruit or reach harvesting size. That’s why gardeners in northern states grow different crops and varieties than those in southern states.

Tomatoes take sixty to ninety days. Peppers are much the same. Okra takes seventy-five days.

Killing fall frost arrives around October first. When summer crops can’t be planted due to cold and frost until late May, that puts summer harvest into late August.

As one who loves to garden, I’m trying to adjust to the new crazy weather patterns.

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GKP Writing News

Annoying Details

Writing a rough draft for a novel is fairly straight forward for me. I start at the beginning and write through to the end ignoring all the little annoying details like facts as I write.

In “The Carduan Chronicles” Ship Eighteen drops out of the worm tunnel somewhere over the solar system. To reach Cardua (Earth), the ship must go toward and over the sun and on out the ecliptic. The time frame is fifteen weeks, their time or ninety days.

Over April the former drafts came together into one piece. The journey of the Arkosans soon to become Carduans after landing, is almost complete. All that remains is to merge the last week into the tale of Ship Nineteen.

This ship dropped out of the worm tunnel into a February ice storm and landed in an Ozark ravine. These nine Carduans have spent the fifteen weeks learning to live on this strange, new world.

Going the Distance

One of those annoying details for Ship Eighteen happens to concern their voyage. How long does it take to get to the sun? Or over the sun? Or on to Cardua?

This meant I needed to know how far apart the planets are from the sun and each other, how big the sun is and the revolution times for the planets. Writing the draft, I guessed.

Thanks to some library books I have more accurate figures now. What I do know for sure is that this is one speedy little ship. It travels a lot faster than any ship we’ve developed so far.

That’s one of the joys of writing science fiction, being able to make some things up. Even so, the ship’s journey must be consistent so those annoying details are important.

Another Draft

Once I have the voyage mapped out timewise, I get to write yet another draft for Ship Eighteen. One advantage is having much of the draft already written, only needing adjustment to the new times.

Ship Nineteen offers a new set of annoying details. I do tend to try to accomplish more in a day than time allows. Unfortunately for the Carduans and my draft, I tend to do the same for them.

The other consideration is the height of the Carduans: four inches. It is a real challenge to see an Ozark ravine from that height.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
Those annoying details came close to sinking this book. Harriet’s place abuts a national forest. Some of the action takes place on the forest roads. I finally had to devise a map of her place and the forest roads, then rewrite scenes so everything happened where it was supposed to.
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Wildflower Hiking

It’s that time of year again. The weather has warmed up. Wildflowers are blooming. It’s time to go wildflower hiking.

Mostly I stay around home as I have many interesting places to check out. Once a week I hike the trails at ShawneeMac Conservation Area. In spite of doing much the same wildflower hiking for nearly thirty years, I still find new plants and take time to admire old friends.

wildflower hiking find of Robin's Plantain
Robin’s plantain is one of the fleabanes. Daisy fleabane is the common one. What sets this one apart is the number of rays. When first spotted, this flower seems surrounded by a halo of pinkish to white fringe. As with other members of the Asteraceae or Aster family, little tube flowers are massed in the central disc. I find these about two foot tall plants scattered, usually in low areas such as ravine bottoms or, as this one is, in a river floodplain.

Some Recent Hikes

One recent hike was to check out a patch of lady’s slippers. They bloom in May. This spring has had several frosts which slowed things down a little. The patch I checked will bloom in about a week.

The Canada geese are enjoying ShawneeMac Lakes. There are so many water loving plants along the lake edges. This hike is often done wearing boots so I can wade in a little for better pictures of the pond weed and water shield among others.

One of my old friends was missing on my wildflower hike along the river. I used to find Confederate violets back in the sandy floodplain. This year I found Virginia bluebells Robin’s plantain, but none of these violets. The river has changed its course this year wiping out some of the banks and gravel bars, creating a few new ones.

Canada geese preening at ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area, Missouri
Going wildflower hiking doesn’t mean not looking at other things such as these Canada geese using a submerged tree as a resting spot, a place to clean, straighten and oil feathers. These birds and others find ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area in the Missouri Ozarks a nice place to visit or stay.

New Plans

Another change this year is in how many pictures I am taking. Last year I ended up with over 18 Gb of pictures. It takes hours and hours to work all of these up. Many of these flowers I’ve taken pictures of for years. This year I’m trying to not take so many of these concentrating on new ones or ones missing pictures or ones I’m not sure of my identification of.

Much as I enjoy going wildflower hiking, I have many other projects as well. Gardens, goats, chickens and others take up time too. And there is “Hopes, Dreams and Reality” to finalize and publish.

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GKP Writing News

You Cannot Go Home

Everyone has memories, good and bad, of where they grew up. If the memories are good, it’s tempting to go back. However, you cannot go home again.

Nonsense? Think about it.

“Tell Me Three Things”

“Tell me Three Things” by Julie Buxbaum is my latest reading book. Josie, still grieving the death of her mother, has been uprooted, moved from a middle class Chicago neighborhood and school to Beverly Hills with a new stepmother and stepbrother and a posh private school. Talk about a tough learning curve.

Of course Josie is homesick, wants desperately to go home. After two months, she is given the chance to go home for a weekend. And in two months, everything has changed. Her best friend has a new best friend and a boyfriend. She no longer fits in, isn’t part of things there.

You can find my 5 star rating and a review of this book on my Goodreads page.

You Cannot Go Home Again

I grew up in southern California. People sometimes ask if I would ever want to move back. My answer is that my California doesn’t exist anymore.

I remember open meadows between Los Angeles and San Diego. There were grape vineyards with grapes laid out on paper between the rows during harvest. The beaches were empty of people during week days. A dairy with real cows and a bottling plant was a few miles away from my home.

None of that is there now. Houses and people have replaced all of it. Even my school, when I visited a year after graduating, was an alien place.

“The Carduan Chronicles”

My little Carduans are stranded 6,000 light years or so from their home. They have no means of ever going home.

How would you react if, suddenly, you were cut off from friends, family, home? These 60 Carduans are trying to cope with this while planning and creating a new life in an alien place.

For them the phrase you cannot go home again has taken on a terrible meaning. Yet life goes on. It changes, it takes on new dreams and new relationships.

cover of "Old Promises" Hazel Whitmore #2 by Karen GoatKeeper
“Old Promises” deals with moving to a new place. Hazel Whitmore grew up in New York City. She has been uprooted to the Missouri Ozarks to deal with relatives she has never met before, a rural life style and a new school. There is no going back to her old home. She is forced to create a new home.

You may not be able to go back, but you can create a new home.

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Raising Seedlings

The easy way of raising seedlings is to buy transplants others have grown. One drawback to doing this is being limited to those varieties offered for sale.

Buying seeds and raising seedlings is a lot of work and takes planning. One advantage is browsing through seed catalogs and selecting varieties that sound interesting.

Take Peppers

I grew up despising green peppers. They were bitter and tasted terrible. I thought all peppers tasted like that.

A friend introduced me to the world of sweet peppers. Then I found bell peppers came in at least eight colors. When I grew them, each had its own flavor.

My friend grew Macedonian sweet peppers. I loved them too.

Most of these are not available as transplants. This year I started seeds for four Macedonian peppers and three colors of bells.

Raising Seedlings My Way

I don’t have the set ups with shelves and lights. They look nice, but I couldn’t justify the expense for something I would use only a few weeks a year.

I’ve finally settled on using Styrofoam cups with holes punched in the bottom and cat litter trays. Yes, that is correct. I use cat litter boxes.

The cups come in various sizes although I favor the eight ounce. I dump potting soil in each, label each and add two seeds.

The litter boxes are an easy to move size, waterproof and hold 19 cups. Since I move the trays out on the porch in the morning for light and back in at night, these are important qualities.

raising seedlings in pots
Labeling the pots is crucial. One pepper plant looks like all the other pepper plants. This particular tray has Balkan Blue and Balkan Yellow seedlings in it. (No, you won’t find these in a seed catalog.) When repotting those second seedlings, I label the needed new pots, fill them with potting soil and start lifting out one seedling. An ice tea spoon works really well for this. These slide down into a hole in the new pot and get watered in. Care must be taken to not crush the stems or tear off the leaves, but the spoon helps with this. Once the seedlings are established, watering is easy as water is poured into the tray and absorbed by the pots.

Germinating Seeds

Tomatoes and peppers need warmth. I have a shelf over the wood rack where I pile the boxes of cups. Old window glass is over the trays both to hold moisture inside and keep the trays from squashing each other.

Warm air bathes the boxes. Most seeds germinate in five to seven days. Any box with seedlings is moved out to where it gets light.

This year I started a number of seeds that like cooler temperatures. These set out on a table I usually use for painting until they germinated.

Last Steps

Since two seeds went into each cup, most cups will have two nice seedlings in them. They can’t both stay in the same cup.

Unless something is wrong with one of the seedlings, I set up another cup and move one seedling as soon as the first true leaves appear. This does require more cups and litter boxes. And time and space to move them in and out of the house.

Ultimately these seedlings will move into the garden. And raising seedlings is over for this year.