Worms of Endearment

Worming My Way to a New Blog

2006-06-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I have reached that point in every blogger's life when it is finally time to make the move from Blogger to TypePad. I'm also rolling all three of my blogs (Dirt, Humboldt Hens, and Worms of Endearment) into one, and in addition to writing about the garden, the chickens, and the worms, I'll also be writing about the book tour and lots of other topics related to my new book, Flower Confidential. My new blog home is here: http://blog.amystewart.com/

and I promise there will be plenty of good worm stuff there, in addition to all the Worms of Endearment archives.

And last, but certainly not least, you'll find me over at GardenRant a few times a week. We're having a lot of fun, so come join us.

Garden Rant Takes Over the World

2006-06-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I started talking with Susan Harris of Takoma Gardener and Michele Owens of Sign of the Shovel about a modest little idea we had to stage a horticultural revolt. We were tired of what the mainstream gardening media has to offer--warmed-over garden tips, repurposed press releases about the ten thousandth new coleus on the market, dull little essays about the wonders of spring--and we were convinced that bloggers could overthrow the gardening establishment in the way that they are transforming coverage of politics and current affairs. (Witness the success of the YearlyKos convention. Not that I want to be the DailyKos of gardening. I'd much rather be the Gawker of gardening. But one thing at a time.)

Like all good revolutionaries, we began by writing a manifesto. You can read the whole thing on our site, but I'll touch on a few of my favorite points here:

--We are convinced that gardening MATTERS. Get us out of the Lifestyle section and as far away from home decorating as possible. We're talking about how we interact with the plant kingdom, not how to choose a throw pillow. This shit is important!

--We are flabbergasted at the idea of "no maintenance" gardens. If I have to read one more magazine article about Easy Container Gardens in 10 Minutes or Less, I may actually go bury MYSELF in the perennial border. Gardening is something you DO. It's not something you buy and arrange around the exterior of your home in between fluffing the aforementioned throw pillows.

--We are delighted by people with a passion for plants. Show some excitement! Have an opinion! Fall in love! Get mad! If you're bored, put your pen down and go outside. Just don't bore us, too.

Are you with me? All right, then. Follow me over to Garden Rant, where I'll be blogging a couple times a week. Some of my favorite new features include:

Ask Dr. Bleedingheart--horticultural advice for the lovelorn. Send in your melodramas today.
I Don't Have a Garden, But I Watch One On TV--reviews of garden television and Internet garden videos. (We'll cover podcasts and radio too, so if it's good, send it our way.)
Taking Your Gardening Dollar--product reviews, rip-offs, and vicarious horticultural shopping experiences.
You! We're looking for guest bloggers, so if you have something brilliant to say, we hope you'll consider saying it on Garden Rant first. Come rant with us!

Sunday New York Times

2006-05-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Check out my op-ed piece in today's New York Times. You'll be hearing more from me in the months to come about my new book, Flower Confidential, but this will give you a preview.

Oddly Fascinating Animated Video...

2006-05-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

shows a worm digesting its food. I love the little cartoon poop left behind at the end. Check it out here:

Overview

Sam James, Worm Hunter

2006-05-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Check out this story about Sam James, earthworm taxonomist who recently found an earthworm in Brazil that was believed to be extinct.

Kansas City infoZine - KU Research Associate Helps Discover Worm Once Thought to be Extinct - USA

More Praise for Earthworms

2006-05-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

"Where there's a healthy earthworm population, there will be 1000 miles of burrows per acre, she continues.

"Fields with earthworm tunnels absorb water at a rate of 4-10 times that of fields without worm tunnels."

Worms also act as a biological filter, she maintains.

"They line their burrows with mucus which absorbs any pollutants, such as nitrates and pesticides, which are in the water. "

Earthworms help prevent erosion

Earthbound Farms Loves Earthworms

2006-05-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

"'Here, you dig the earth and there are earthworms,' says Kodet. 'In my 22 years working for a conventional grower, I never saw an earthworm.' "

THE FACES OF ORGANIC / EARTHBOUND FARM: Backyard farmers emerge as top organic produce brand

Honey, what's for dinner?

2006-04-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Worms, of course!

"They taste like cockles, earthy and a bit bitter," he said, describing the blanched worms he ate, having heard that earthworm was used to cure fever in Indonesia.

New Straits Times - Malaysia News Online

Be Good to Your Worms

2006-04-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

The Salt Lake Tribune reminds us that "bumpy lawns can drive some homeowners crazy. Even while acknowledging that worms are beneficial in the long run, many people ask how they can kill this lawn 'pest.' "

Boy, does that drive me crazy. People, a lawn with a good earthworm population is a healthy lawn! Be happy! Celebrate!

Seriously, if you've got time to worry about little tiny piles of earthworm castings in your grass, you have way too much time on your hands. Go volunteer somewhere. Spend more time with your grandchildren. Write a novel. Or even better--rip out part of that lawn and plant a nice time-consuming vegetable garden.

Actually, once piece of practical advice: set the blade on your mower a little higher. The taller grass will hide worm castings, conserve water, crowd out weeds, reduce thatch, and create a healthier lawn overall.

Salt Lake Tribune - Food:

Invite a Worm to Dinner

2006-03-21T20:38:00.000-08:00

In honor of Earth Day, Organic Valley Family of Farms would like you to hold an Earth Dinner to celebrate the planet's bounty.

"Make it simple or make it splendid! From a potluck dinner to a masterful multi-course presentation--any style works for an Earth Dinner. The key is to know the origins of what's being served-how it was grown, where it came from, who grew it, its nutritional value. Each dish brought to the table provides an opportunity for us to talk about its origins and its connections to our personal histories through the activity cards provided in this package."

Yes, there are activity cards to spark your earthy discussion, including one that"makes players think creatively -- e.g., pretend you're an earthworm running for public office!"

I'll give you a little while to think that over.

Earth Dinner Plan Your Dinner

Extinct taxonomists?

2006-03-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

Speaking of extinct earthworms-and we were--here's a funny little story from a funny little planet about another vanishing species--oligochaetologists. Make of it what you will.

Berkeley Daily Planet

The Missing Tiller

2006-03-14T21:50:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from an excerpt from a new novel on Upton Sinclair called U.S.! by Chris Bachelder, in which titles for a book on earthworms are imagined...and said book is then imaginatively sent to the remainder bin.

Sigh.

NPR : 'U.S.!': Resurrecting Upton Sinclair: " The strong, near-rotten smell in the car made me remember the way the summer rains would bring up long, knotty earthworms in the streets of my childhood neighborhood. It occurs to me now that I haven't seen worms like that in years. Perhaps the earthworm is a bellwether, a coal-mine canary, yet another harbinger of planetary doom. No doubt there will soon be a book, called The Missing Tiller, perhaps, or Dearthworm, blurbed as 'quite possibly the best of the disappearing animal books.' And the books about disappearing frogs, disappearing dolphins, and disappearing eagles will disappear to the discount table, three for ten dollars."

I Left My Worms in San Francisco

2006-03-13T21:02:00.000-08:00

Join me at San Francisco’s Cow Palace for three worm workshops, with booksignings afterwards at the Builders Booksource booth. It’s all happening on:

Saturday, March 18, 2:30 pm
"The Secret Life of Worms" (Kids program)

Saturday, March 18, 4:15 pm
"Worm Composting 101"

Sunday, March 19, 1:00 pm
"The Secret Life of Worms" (Kids program)

For tickets & information:

San Francisco Flower & Garden Show

A Shout-Out to Yelm

2006-02-25T20:23:00.000-08:00

I was so happy to see the folks from Yelm Earth at the Seattle garden show. This worm farm in Washington state has been through a lot of changes over the years. I went to visit it when I was doing research for The Earth Moved and I think it was for sale then. Anyway, there's a good group of people tending the worms, selling castings, and more. They've got a rich supply of manure for feedstock, good equipment, and plenty of knowledge. Check them out.

Yelm Earthworm & Castings Farm -

Ice Worms!

2006-02-23T19:29:00.000-08:00

Now, this is cool. The Seattle Times reports on an expedition to find ice worms, tiny segmented worms that live around glaciers. But here are some things you may not know about ice worms:

Their Latin name is Mesenchytraeus solifugus. They're in the same taxonomic class as regular segmented earthworms that live in your garden.

They eat snow algae.

There can be as many as 2600 ice worms in a square meter of glacier. One glacier can hold more ice worms than the entire human population.

They live in temperate climates in Alaska, Canada, Oregon, and Washington.

Check them out here:

The Seattle Times: Local News: Ice worms: They're real, and they're hot

Now All I Need is a Title

2006-02-21T17:13:00.000-08:00

We take a break from our regularly scheduled worm programming for a special announcement:

I need some help choosing a title for my next book. It's just four or five little words--you wouldn't think it would be so hard, but my editor and I have been taxing our poor little brains for weeks now and we still haven't settled on the perfect title.

So now I've set up an online survey and I'd really appreciate it if you'd go take the survey and encourage your friends to do the same. You won't have to log in or provide any personal information.

Amy's Next Book: The Survey

If you have more ideas than what the survey can handle, feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail.

By the way, I'd like to thank the author Po Bronson for the inspiration for this survey. He went through a similar process with the cover design for his last book, Why Do I Love These People?

Palouse Worm Gets National Attention

2006-02-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

Oh, this is a little one. Good news, I suppose--that means that some big mommy worms are out there having babies. It gives me hope, knowing that giant earthworms are still roaming the deep.

ABC News: Meter-Long Monsters That Smell Like Lilies

Meet Me in Seattle

2006-02-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

The worms and I are headed to Seattle in February. If you live in the Pacific Northwest and you've never been to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show...well, you don't know what you're missing. This is an over-the-top floral and garden extravaganza. I'm glad I'm scheduled for two days, because it will take me that long to get through it.

Come say hello at one of my three worm composting workshops:

Saturday, February 11, 12 noon
"The Secret Life of Worms"Sprouts Stage (Family Program)

Sunday, February 12, 11 a.m.
"Composting with Earthworms"Monrovia Stage

Sunday, February 12, 3 p.m.
"The Secret Life of Worms"Sprouts Stage (Family Program)

"Composting with Earthworms" description (the "Secret Life of Worms" is a shorter version for kids)

Join Amy Stewart, author of The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, for an entertaining and in-depth exploration of that tireless ploughman, the earthworm. She’ll bring her worms and her worm bin with her for this hands-on workshop.

Find out all about the care and feeding of earthworms, and learn more about the extraordinary role that these creatures play in the soil. Thousands of earthworms can live in a small worm bin and consume all your kitchen scraps, creating earthworm castings that are rich in soil microbes and help produce healthy, disease-free plants. Worm composting is also a fun project for parents and kids to do together, allowing kids to learn firsthand about recycling and earth science.

For tickets and more information, visit the Northwest Flower & Garden Show's website.

Earthworms Eat Invasive Plants

2006-02-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

Now here's a win-win situation. Feed water hyacinths to earthoworms. They don't call this plant "the blue devil" for nothing: it'll clog a river or a lake in no time flat. Turns out that worms love the stuff and 180 tons of yanked-out-and-piled-up water hyacinth will become 60 tons of rich worm castings. Go, worms! Then can you start on my dandelions?

The Hindu : Sci Tech / Agriculture : Water hyacinth: potential source for vermicompost

Breaking news: Giant Palouse worm found in Idaho

2006-02-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

This just in from the Seattle Times. These worms have not been seen in over 20 years and some people feared they were extinct. William Fender and his mother Dorothy did some of the early research about these earthworms, and she had a few specimens in her collection in Oregon when I spoke to her a few years ago as I was doing research for The Earth Moved.

"A University of Idaho graduate student recently found a rare giant Palouse earthworm. Yaniria Sanchez-de Leon is apparently the first person in nearly two decades to find a specimen of the worm, which can reportedly grow to 3 feet long.

She found the 6-inch white worm in May while digging at Washington State University's Smoot Hill Ecological Preserve near Palouse, Wash. The Palouse occupies an estimated 2 million acres of northcentral Idaho and southeastern Washington.

Earthworm experts who gathered for a workshop in Sanchez-de Leon's native Puerto Rico in November confirmed Sanchez-de Leon's identification, as did Northwest earthworm expert William M. Fender-Westwind of Portland, Ore.

"By earthworm standards, they're pretty cool," said James Johnson, the head of the university's Plant, Soil and Entomological Sciences Department."

The Seattle Times: Local News: Rare giant earthworm found in Idaho:

More Organic Gardening in Cuba

2006-01-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

The good news about worm composting is always rolling in from Cuba. They're quite focused on reducing inputs (i.e., fertilizer) and increasing self-sufficiency, not to mention recycling, and what does all that mean? Worms, worms, worms. If only we all lived on islands. Oh, I suppose we do, in a larger sense.

Urban Agriculture Gaining Momentum in Las Tunas, Cuba:

"As part of the efforts that Cuba is making to increase the areas dedicated to urban agriculture, a plan to set up 135 new organic vegetable plots is being organized in eastern Las Tunas province.

These areas of land of approximately one hectare are mostly sown with green vegetables and spices. They have watering systems and use earthworm humus. "

Earthworm Eggs

2006-01-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

This is a crazy, but very cool, idea: Buy earthworm eggs and plant them in the ground like seeds. Let the little critters hatch and make magic in your soil.

I believe the species is Lumbricus rubellus. This is a little red worm that will thrive in fertile soil and compost piles, but it is not a deep burrower like a nightcrawler. It's also not necessarily the best worm for a worm bin; for that I'd recommend Eisenia fetida, the red wiggler, which is the kind most commonly sold by worm farmer to use in worm bins.

Available from Gardener's Supply Company

Do you see a worm?

2006-01-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

Bostonist looks at a museum and sees a worm:

"...our first reaction to seeing the architectural rendering of the proposed structure was that its smooth, curvilinear shape reminded us of a gigantic smiling earthworm emerging from the expressway tunnel underneath the greenway."

Bostonist: Lumbricus Terrestris

But this is nothing compared to the real thing: the Giant Worm museum (aka Wildlife Wonderland) in southern Australia, where visitors not only see the creature their region is famous for rendered large alongside the Bass Highway, but they can even walk through the belly of the beast and get an idea of what it's like to be inside a worm. Wanna know more about the worm or the musuem? Yeah, you saw it coming: read the book.

The Origin of Feces

2006-01-26T11:32:00.000-08:00

Washington City Paper helpfully provides a naturalist's guide to identifying the...er...droppings that locals may encounter on their walks. Conspiculously absent? Worm castings. Come on, people. Get it right.

District Line . Washington City Paper

Amateur Microscopy

2006-01-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

is blogging about whatever fits under the microscope. How about a worm? Some dirt?

Amateur Microscopy

Earthworms Tell the Tale

2006-01-05T19:43:00.000-08:00

Once again, the Philippines takes the lead with the latest earthworm news. If an area has been logged (not anywhere, just there), you'll see these particular worms in the forest. Not because the worms themselves are particularly attracted to logged areas--trees from coastal areas are transplanted to repopulate the area, and those trees have Brazilian worms in their roots. Got it? Good.

Oh, and these worms' "excretion becomes compact, which blocks the entry of water into the soil instead of facilitating it and helping reduce floods."

Where loggers go, Brazilian worms follow - INQ7.net

New Wormery Adventures Here

2005-12-19T10:27:00.000-08:00

There's very little going on in the lives of my worms right now, except for the fact that four hens are on the hunt for them, so instead I refer you to the adventures of:

fluffius muppetus

This Week in Fake News

2005-12-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

In his column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll speculates on the kinds of "good stories about the war" that the Pentagon has been covertly placing in Iraqi newspapers.

JON CARROLL:

"Endangered worms make a comeback: One of the rarest worms in the world, Aporrectodea (species withheld by request), has been spotted by biologists in more than a dozen locations around Mosul. Once driven almost to extinction by agricultural practices, the worm has used rich new sources of nutrients to thrive and multiply.

Said a worm expert: 'First the land was allowed to lie fallow, then the ground was turned over in the course of the liberation. Add to that the calcium and potassium found in human bones, and iron in the blood, and you've basically got worm heaven. And I know the guys would have been happy to contribute to this new habitat.' "

Moving the Worms

2005-12-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

A whole mess of giant Australian earthworms have to be moved to make way for Progress. It's tricky work--it's taken two months, and they've moved 600 earthworms in that time, but with a 20% mortality rate. They may be big, but they're fragile. Sometimes workers would spend two hours brushing the dirt away before they could move them.

Worming out of a problem - National - theage.com.au

Earthworms can help dissolve blood clots for stroke patients

2005-11-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

" I observed that the crude extract of our native and composting earthworms have demonstrated anti blood clotting activity,' said Ang Lopez"

Crude extract? What is that, worm juice? And why does all the interesting worm news always come from the Philipines?

Earthworms can help dissolve blood clots for stroke patients

This Just In

2005-11-14T22:24:00.000-08:00

Worms make a mess and encourage weeds. So spray on the herbicides. Nice. Thanks, guys.

News 14 Carolina | 24 Hour Local News | TOP STORIES | Earthworms leave behind a mess

Gardeners' Question Time

2005-11-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

BBC Radio 4 has chosen The Earth Moved as one of their recommended books for Christmas 2005. See the complete list, and tune in for the show this Sunday Nov. 13, here:

BBC - Radio 4 - Gardeners' Question Time - Homepage

Nightcrawlers: Just Blowing Smoke?

2005-11-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

Researchers at Ohio State University blew smoke into nightcrawler burrows to study the extent to which these worm holes help move liquid manure around underground. Farmers inject the manure into the ground as a way of disposing of it; their rich soil and no-till soil conservation techniques make the earth a perfect earthworm habitat. Great news, except that the burrows are helping the manure drain so well that it tends to collect in these underground drain pipes and show up where it's not wanted. Unfortunately, that could mean that they also help move pesticides and chemical fertilizers into underground drainage systems faster, too.

The solution? Don't get rid of the worms. They're just doing their job. Change your farming practices.

“The most practical and best suggestion, though,” Shipitalo says, “would be to install shutoff valves so the drains can be shut during manure application and for a short time afterwards. Ohio farmers are currently doing this, with cost-sharing from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Get the full story here.

Cafe Spineless

2005-11-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

I'm a few days late getting this up, but Circus of the Spineless was hosted by Snail's Tales this month. Go here for a dazzling assortment of inveterate invertebrates, all served up for your enjoyment. You got your snails, your worms, your caterpillars, and so much more. This image comes from one of my favorite menu selections, pomegranate stuffed with paper wasp. Mmmmmm!

Worms and grubs

2005-11-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

A post at ...but it's dirty reminds me that people often ask me about a grub or worm they found, and it's worth pointing out, in case you've ever wondered, that when we talk about worms, we're usually talking about terrestrial worms, those creatures that belong to the taxonomic class Oligochaeta. Cabbageworms, cutworms, parsley worms, and tomato worms are not worms at all but moth or butterfly caterpillars. Roundworms, tapeworms, flatworms and ribbon worms are interesting creatures in their own right but are not earthworms as such. When you read about scientists doing genetic experiments with worms, they are also usually not talking about earthworms, but instead about c. elegans, a sort of lab rat of the nematode world.

Why Waste Your Waste?

2005-10-31T15:05:00.000-08:00

For those of you in the UK...a new book on worm composting. Check it out here.

From the creator of the Waste Buster Wormery. (that's what they call worm bins in the UK. Wormeries. Charming, yes?)

Wiggly Wigglers is podcasting

2005-10-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

There's not much going on, podcast-wise, in the world of worms, but UK supplier of composting gear and much more, Wiggly Worms, has just launched a podcast. You can check it out here:

Wiggly Wigglers

My Grandfather's Earthworm Farm

2005-10-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a great story about an earthworm farm--oh, and they happened to raise, chickens, cows, goats, pigs, corn, fruit, and more.

My Grandfather's Earthworm Farm

How's this for a springtime farm ritual?

"When spring arrived, the season of the annual ploughing, the top layer of the heap would be stripped back, revealing the perfect work of the worms. What had originally been an ill-smelling mixture of manure, urine, and litter, was now a dark, fertile, crumbly soil, with the odour of fresh-turned earth. This material was not handled with forks, but with shovels. There were no dense cakes of burned, half-decomposed manure. My grandfather would take a handful of the material and smell it before pronouncing it ready for the fields. The 'smell test' was a sure way of judging the quality. When perfect transformation had taken place, all odour of manure had disappeared and the material had the clean smell of new earth."

Agrilink

2005-10-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

Always something new about worms from the Phillipines:

Organic movement gains ground - INQ7.net

"Over at the Earthworm Sanctuary booth, proprietor Antonio de Castro talked about the "Angels of the Earth," the earthworms considered among the lowest of God's creatures. And yet, they are a farmer's biggest helpers. Found almost anywhere, they are easy to care for and their castings make one of the best--if not the best--fertilizers one can find anywhere."

Worms Go To Fourth Grade

2005-10-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Rodale Institute (publishers of Organic Gardening magazine) did a little worm project with some fourth graders--if you're looking for ideas for classroom worm projects (and who isn't, really?) check it out.

Green Thumbs Around the World, USA

Worm Observations

2005-10-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

A few words Living Deliberately, who is out there blogging about worms tonight:

"These two earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) jumped into my basement when I opened the door to the yard this morning...The worm is a muscle surrounding a digestive tract, mostly protein to the hungry robin. I released these individuals back into the yard. They both tried to twist away from my fingers when I reached for them on the steps. They did not realize that I was trying to help."

Living Deliberately: Builders

Pickled Snails

2005-10-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Brilliant, brilliant. I've been following along with Circus of the Spineless, a traveling blog circus all about slimy spineless creatures of all kinds, and I've learned that you can in fact preserve snails in alcohol. It even preserves their DNA.

Somehow I thought the snail would simply melt in alcohol, the way it would if you poured salt on it. But no. They are pickled, put in jars, and stored in museums so generations to come can study them.

What a world we live in.

SNAIL'S TALES: Gastropods for posterity

Delusions of Grandeur

2005-10-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

This just in from another Amy.

Animals Have Problems Too

Compost to benefit Hurricane Victims

2005-10-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

A university researcher in Pennsylvania is giving away earthworms and vermicompost free to anyone who makes a Red Cross donation. This is all leftover stuff from his many research projects involving worms and dirt. If you're in the area (he can't ship), check it out.

Compost to benefit Hurricane Victims

Earthworm Dissection

2005-10-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

Whoa. Cool photo of an earthworm dissection from Ravi, who appears to be using his blog to administer quizzes for his zoology class.

I never could bring myself to dissect an earthworm--not as a kid, not as an adult. As a student I always managed to talk my lab partner into doing it, and we're still friends to this day. (Thanks, Annette) Hey, she was already planning to be a shrink at that point, which is kind of like med school, so she'd need to know this stuff, right?

Anyway, you can find out more than you ever wanted to know about cutting open an earthworm by following along with Ravi's class.

Better Than Disneyland

2005-10-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Leisure Farms

A new theme park devoted to farming--yes, farming!--features worms:

"The area also has a section on permission, or using earthworms to make fertilizers that are needed to sustain organic farming. The vermicomposing pits allow visitors to see up close what earthworms called African night crawlers, look like.

'The earthworms are imported from Iloilo as they are more prolific and can make the fertilizers faster than the garden variety earthworms,' said Dexter Banzali, general manager of Leisure Farms."

I went to their website, which is all written in the future tense, as if none of this is actually happening yet, but they do promise "agritainment" (which apparently refers to two other terms I'd never heard of, "agritourism" and "entertainment farming")--and this will be part of a larger "exclusive residential farm resort with an agro-tourism community." You can learn how to farm, you can bring your livestock (but no pigs) and you can build yourself a little house.

Next time you're in the Phillipines, please check this out and report back. I have so many questions, I hardly know where to begin.

As the Worms Turn

2005-10-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

So as I said yesterday, you'll be hearing more from me about Circus of the Spineless in the coming days. It's a three-ring blog circus that shines a spotline on all kinds of invertebrate-related blogging going on out there. Today, pay a visit to Bootstrap Analysis (Chronicles and Musings of a Field Biologist), where you'll learn all about the non-native species of earthworms that are transforming some of our Northern forests.

Why only forests in the North? Because those areas were covered by a glacier during the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. The ice wiped out whatever native worms were there. The forests that grew after the glaciers receeded were earthworm-free. As non-native worms moved into the area (and most worms in your backyard, including red wigglers and nightcrawlers, are actually European worms), they gobbled up all the leaves that covered the forest floor--called the duff layer--and that changed what plants could grow in the forest.

Does this mean that non-native worms are an unmitigated evil? Not necessarily. We don't know whether they cause harm in other forests, mostly because earthworm science is an underfunded field and it just hasn't been studied. And if you grow non-native plants in your garden, and bring in non-native soil--well, you already have a somewhat artificial environment. A worm population migrates very slowly--only a few yards a year--so it's not as if worms in your backyard are going to end up in a forest miles away anytime soon anyway.

When I dug up different species of earthworms in my own backyard and sent them to a taxonomist to be identified, they all turned out to be non-native European species.

As the Worms Turn

Circus of the Spineless

2005-10-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

You'll be hearing much more from me about this in the coming days. Meanwhile, satisfy your curiosity here:

Circus of the Spineless

Do Earthworms Glow in the Dark?

2005-10-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Why, yes. There are some that do glow softly. Earthworms secrete a slimy fluid that they use for locomotion, among other things. This coelomic fluid, in certain species, gives off a distinct blue or orange glow.

To find out more than you ever wanted to know about glow-in-the-dark worms, check out:

Earthworm Bioluminescence

More Bugs

2005-09-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you're into worms, you've got to be into bugs too, right? It's all about slowing down and taking an up-close look at the crazy natural world. This just in from Blue Ridge Blog, where you will see some extraordinary photographs. Because we are still a long way from winter, I can enjoy going through the archives and admiring her crisp, chilly images of snow. Ahhhhhh....

Existential Worm Questions

2005-09-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

Students turn to worms - Elm Leaves [09-28-05]

I love the way the teacher in this story frames the big life questions facing earthworms:

"Like if it's raining today, what do you do if you're a worm? Do you stay in your burrow? You may drown. Do you go outside? You may be eaten by a robin. You make your own adventure"

Whose Poo Are You?

2005-09-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's topic, this seems downright socially acceptable. Thanks to Swamp Things and Swamp Things Two for this and many other fascinating images of creepy, crawly, swamp-dwelling critters.

It's a big world, filled with tiny little fascinating things. A few billion of them probably live in this pile of dung.

Compost Blooms

2005-09-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Last year at the Seattle Garden Show, I met the people at the Kings County Wastewater Division. They were handing out samples of GroCo, which is a composted biosolids product.

Yes, that means sewer sludge. But stick with me here. They compost this stuff with sawdust and produce a product that is much, much lower in metals than the mandatory minimums that are imposed on any compost product. And of course they are pathogen-free.

The potential for using worms to digest biosolids and create an even more nutrient-rich product is enormous. Sewage treatment plants all around the country are upgrading to new, clean technology that uses nothing but heat, beneficial microbes, and ultraviolet light to clean the stuff. Already the water is safe to use in irrigation. Feeding the solids to worms and selling or giving away the finished product is the next step. Right now, many sewer treatment plants pay to haul the stuff away, even if it's got the EPA's highest rating for cleanliness and safety.

Now, of course, we need to monitor what's in this stuff and do a better job of preventing people (and industry) from depositing materials in the waste stream that they shouldn't. (Paint and solvents, for instance, should be properly disposed of, not poured down the drain, so they don't end up at the sewer treatment plant to begin with.)

Kings County has been very responsible about this stuff, responding to concerns that locally-produced compost may contain the herbicide Clopyralid by testing GroCo and finding it completely free of the chemical.

Check it out.

Kings County GroCo

Cool Earthworm Diagrams

2005-09-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

...and more. This site offers a good overview of earthworm anatomy, down to every last seta and clitellum. Did you know that they have light-sensitive cells along their bodies to help them stay out of the light (and safely underground)? That their brains are so simple that if you remove the brain entirely, there's not much change in their behavior?

Earthworms

Worms: A Love Story

2005-09-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

For the last several years, I have kept five or ten thousand earthworms in a kitchen composter outside my back door. I feed them coffee grounds and banana skins, and every few months I scoop out the rich black castings, or earthworm manure, that they leave behind. In addition to producing fertilizer, earthworms are great pets—they are loyal, hardworking, and undemanding. I’ve become so interested in their habits and lifestyles that I decided to write a book about them. It was a fascinating year, researching earthworms.

“What’s your next book about?” a friend asked one night at dinner.

“Worms,” I said. It’s such a conversation-stopper.

“Worms,” she said. That’s all most people say at first.

“Yes,” I said. “Worms. Charles Darwin wrote a very interesting book on worms. It outsold Origin of Species during his lifetime. He was fascinated by worms. He took them up to his studio and played the piano for them to see how they reacted to different notes on the scale.”

She started to smile. It’s such a charming picture, old white-haired Darwin with his flower pots of dirt and worms.

“Then there’s this French scientist from the sixties,” I told her. “Andre Voisin. He believed that worms were responsible for the creation of all the major civilizations in the world. He had this map that showed where all the great civilizations started—the Nile, places like that—and overlaid on top of it was a map that showed the areas of the world with the highest concentrations of worms. Of course, they were the exact same areas. His theory was that because the worms were plowing the soil, the people were freed up to do things like invent math and build the Pyramids.”

This theory of Voisin’s makes innate sense. People nod knowingly at the notion that worms are responsible for the creation of all great societies. No one, when I have explained Voisin’s ideas, has ever argued with them. Music? Astronomy? Written language? Of course. We owe it all to the worms. The more I talk about worms, the more people warm to the subject.

“Now that I think about it,” she said, “my dad was interested in worms. He bought this piece of property on the coast, and I remember going out there when we were kids and helping him dig up one cubic foot of soil, then counting all the worms in that cubic foot. He said that we had so many worms because the earth had not been disturbed in so long.”

“That’s right!” I said. “Untilled soil has the highest earthworm population. That’s the newest thinking about organic gardening, that you should till the soil as little as possible and let the earthworms do it for you.”

“So you’ve got time to invent more math,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

I have always introduced my worms to visitors. At first I thought that everyone would want to meet them. Often I would greet guests at the door and lead them right to the kitchen porch, where I’d lift the lid off the composter and turn over the layer of shredded newspaper and coffee grounds. I would scoop out a handful of flailing red worms, their yellow bellies exposed to the light for one brief second before they dropped back to their bedding below. I wanted to show my guests how brilliant and accomplished my worms were. I wanted them to murmur their approval the way they might if they were listening to a piece of music I’d just learned on the piano, or inspecting an oil painting I’d recently completed.

Sometimes people are not as impressed with my worms as I would like them to be. Once when I lived in Santa Cruz, my parents brought some friends from England to visit. They were eager to see a coastal California garden in full bloom. I marched them without comment past the bougainvillea, Mexican sage, California poppy, and the orange and lemon trees. I led them directly to the worm composter and lifted the lid with a flourish. A hundred or so fruit flies drifted out of the mess of rotting peaches and dryer lint.

“These,” I said, already realizing how badly I’d miscalculated the event, “are my worms.”

My parents and their friends glanced down from as great a distance as they could manage. The fruit flies continued to swarm; the worms made an odd squishing sound as they dove away from the light into their mass of decaying food. One strip of newspaper, half eaten by the worms, announced the beginning of the Microsoft antitrust case. It looked like the end of the world inside my compost bin. I was so proud, but looking back, I realize that everyone else was appalled. I resolved to never show my worms to anyone unless they specifically asked to see them.

Now, I should say that fruit fly infestations are rare and easily prevented; I’d just gotten careless and forgotten to keep a really thick layer of newspaper on top. A worm bin is generally a neat, tidy, and not at all smelly operation, and plenty of people have been more than happy to meet the worms over the years. My uncle Jim came to visit recently and when I slipped outside to dump the vegetable scraps into the worm bin, he followed me and spent a few minutes out there, looking over the worms, discussing their feeding habits and birth rates. If you come to dinner at my house, this is how you ingratiate yourself to the hostess: you step out to the side porch to talk banana skins and carrot tops and smile down at the worms.

Researching the lives of earthworms has put me in touch with some of the leading earthworm scientists in the world (believe it or not, there are only a few). There is plenty of promising new research about the role of earthworms and their castings in improving plant growth, reducing plant diseases, and even preventing some pest infestations. Stay tuned for more news, and check my Events page for upcoming talks around the country.

The new improved Worm Digest!

2005-09-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Great news--it looks like Worm Digest, the world's only earthworm magazine (did you know there was one?) has found a new home. They had a very active and useful worm forum that was gradually getting harder to use, so I'm thrilled to see that working, as well. Stop by and check them out.

Worm Digest - Home

Worms or chickens?

2005-09-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

What you see here is our four chickens scratching around in the compost pile for worms. I spent an entire day chipping yard waste, and the result was this modest pile of mulch, maybe four feet tall. I was amazed at how quickly the red wigglers colonized the pile. It's just thick with them now, and when we let the chickens out to forage, they rush to the compost heap as if it's happy hour and they're running to the bar. I do feel sorry for the little worms, but this is the food chain, after all. The hens leave their droppings, which in turn will become food for future generations of worms. (You can meet the chickens here.)

Minnesota Worms

2005-09-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

A great story here about researchers and the kinds of education they do--includes Cindy Hale, who I featured in The Earth Moved. Cindy did some fascinating research about the invasion of non-native worms into forests in Minnesota.

Duluth News Tribune | 09/20/2005 | Institute puts students on front lines of science

Am I Bugging You Yet?

2005-09-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Check out this brilliant, fabulous, and altogether wonderful bug blog:

Am I Bugging You Yet?

Get to Know Your Earthworms

2005-09-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

UC Davis has a useful page of species profiles and other worm-related information. Check it out here:

Earthworm Information

Ridding the Lawn of Angleworms

2005-09-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

A distressing Question of the Day from the Old Farmer's Almanac about how to rid the lawn of angleworms. ("Angleworms" is another word for terrestrial earthworms.)

The Almanac suggests pouring soapy water into the grass. What???

Folks, earthworms are good for the lawn. Set the blade higher and let the grass grow a little taller. That will conserve water, let roots grow deeper, and make it easier to mow even if there are some worm castings in the grass.

The Old Farmer's Almanac - Should any attempt be made to rid a lawn of angleworms? We have so many of them that our yard is difficult to mow.

Earthworm Emporium

2005-09-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

So I had this bright idea to make an earthworm T-shirt for a friend, and CafePress made the whole thing so easy that I'm going to leave the design on their site and you can order one anytime you want. Be the first on your block to own a "Worm Hugger" t-shirt or coffee mug. Just follow the link.

Earthworm Emporium : CafePress.com

Earthworm Birth

2005-09-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

If you ever wanted to watch an earthworm give birth, now's your chance. What this actually means is that you can watch a baby worm emerge from a cocoon. Worms don't go through a larval stage; they just emerge, fully formed, as tiny versions of their parents.

Worm World: About Earthworms

Earthworm Genome Mapping

2005-09-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

It's a little technical, but worth checking out. Everything you ever wanted to know about the gene sequences of earthworms is here.

earthworms.org - Environmental Genomics of Earthworms

Wonder worms

2005-08-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

So this is a pretty normal article about how great worm composting is until you get about halfway down, and a worm composting expert from India just happens to mention casually that his wife wasn't too crazy about worms when he first got started with them, especially when a few of them "ventured into our bed."

What?

That's all I want to know about that. Fortunately, he didn't elaborate.

Wonder worms

Vancouver, City of Worm Enlightenment

2005-08-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is about the Pacific Northwest and earthworms, but these people have really got it going on. They even offer suggestions for a "dog waste" composter, although they are careful to point out that there is no finished product to be used in the garden. The goal is to create more of an underground digester that you can deposit the little treasures in. Not much to do with worms, but the point is that they leave no compost pile unturned.

City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes

Worm Power

2005-08-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for some basic ideas on getting started with vermicomposting, check out Organic Gardening's worm resource page here:

Worm Power

By Way of Explanation

2005-08-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

I'm moving my Salon.com worm blog, Worms of Endearment, over to this site where it will be easier to manage. It'll take me a while to get all (or most) of my old posts over here. Bear with me. We're under construction.

Worms in India

2004-07-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

GASP! It's a posting from me! I'm afraid that very mundane earning-a-living tasks have taken me away from this blog. I'll probably be pretty sporadic for a while now.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting article on worms & agriculture in India.

The Garden

2004-05-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

It's almost impossible to take a good photograph of a garden in sunlight. There's just too much white light bouncing around. Even though I know this, the side garden was so beautiful today when the sun hit it that I ran for my camera. I had a polarizing filter, which I thought would help, but as you can see, my serene and lovely garden looks like chaos in this picture. Well, take my word for it, it really did look great.

Made another batch of Soil Soup. This time I applied it only to the plants that needed the most help--roses, berries, new transplants. I have noticed new blooms on several plants this week, including the roses, but to be perfectly fair and balanced I must also say that we had a good deep rain followed by days of warm sunshine, and that probably helped, too.

Brew.

2004-05-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Made my first batch of Soil Soup compost tea this morning. You know the tea is ready when it forms a foamy head, kind of like the head on a beer, and when "bioslime" builds up around the bucket and the air pump. ("Bioslime" is their term, not mine.) The whole process was quite easy--because I'm using city water, which contains chlorine, I set up the brewer and let it run with plain water for a few hours to let the chlorine evaporate, and then I added the tea bag filled with worm castings (castings provided, but I added some of my own, of course) and poured in a little of the nutrient solution, which consists of molasses--a sugar source for the bacteria--as well as other ingredients like kelp that are found in organic liquid fertilizers.

Because it is chilly here right now, with temps rarely reaching 70 degrees, it took about 36 hours for my brew to reach this completed stage. I confess that I found myself wondering whether the electricity consumption outweighed the environmental benefits that I might gain by brewing my own tea, but I'll reserve judgement on that issue.

I mixed the tea with water--ideally, I would use water from which the chlorine had evaporated, but I didn't have the patience for that--and poured it on all of my plants that needed a little boost. This included new, struggling transplants, roses with blackspot, berries and apple trees that are prone to disease, etc. I don't have a lawn, but I thought grass would be a good testing ground, so I sprayed some on a section of my neighbor's lawn, too. Oh, and I poured some into the large compost pile of dead weeds that I'd created over the last week, to see how it might work as a compost activator.

One observation so far: a near-dead clematis is putting out a few green shoots. Now if only I can keep the snails away.

The product information that comes with the Soil Soup brewer says that it can take the place of compost by adding to plants & soil all the microbes that compost provides, and that the tea can even help improve soil structure. There are plenty of spots in my garden with hard, unimproved clay soil, so I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

This brewer retails for $300. That's an expensive toy--far more than I would normally spend on something for the garden. You can buy more worm castings and nutrient solution from them, but over time I intend to use my own worm castings and I wonder if I can create an acceptable substitute for the nutrient solution with a combination of molasses and liquid organic fertilizer.
I figure I probably spend around $100/year or less on fertilizer, and another $100/year on bagged compost, manure, etc. Compost tea might not replace all of those purchases, but if I can, in fact, stop buying MOST of those products, it might pay for itself over 2 years.

I've invited the folks at Soil Soup to follow along and post comments, insights, information, etc. about the brewer as I test it. I plan to make another batch this weekend to use on other parts of the garden. I might try to brew most weekends this summer, alternating where I use the tea so that most sections of the garden are getting two applications a month.

I Am Not Alone

2004-05-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

There's another worm blogger out there, folks, and she's posting a lot more than I am these days. Check out the other Amy's worm blog. I do intend to set up the Soil Soup brewer this weekend and give a full report on home-brewed worm castings tea.
I've been engaged in a massive weed-pulling job now that the book tour's over. Back to it...

Garden

2004-05-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

Finally, the garden's in bloom.

Thanks, worms.

Diane Rehm

2004-05-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

You can listen to the interview on the Diane Rehm Show here. It's the May 17 broadcast.

The last day of the book tour, last leg home, and I miss the connection. There does not seem to be any good reason for this. The plane sat on the ground in DC for a good 20 minutes or so, just enough to get us off to a bad start, and when we landed in San Francisco we sat for another 20 minutes or so. Long enough to ensure that my plane for Eureka would take off without me.
I’m so painfully tired, so completely worn out, that of course I took this personally, as if United Airlines had realized they didn’t like me and my silly little plastic tub of worms any more and had decided to express their dislike by making sure I didn’t get home at a decent hour.

I got the last seat on the 10:30 flight, a blessing I really should be grateful for, because there were people behind me in line at the ticket counter who did not get a seat and will be spending the night in San Francisco. If I had been told I had to spend the night in some crappy hotel by the airport and fly home tomorrow, I probably would have burst into tears at the ticket counter. As it was, I took my boarding pass and called home with a trembly lower lip to tell Scott that I’d be stumbling in around midnight. That’s 3 a.m. DC time, for those of you who are keeping score.

And I know, I know, there are worse things in life than having your flight delayed on the way home from your interview on the Diane Rehm show. I get it that I’m whining. But it’s my diary, so I get to be a little self-indulgent.

Diane was great. She was so enthusiastic about the book, as was her producer. She seemed genuinely amazed and fascinated at all things invertebrate. I brought some worms into the studio with me that I’d gotten from a worm farmer at the plant sale on Saturday; Diane loved that I had worms. “Just like Amy Tan with her little dogs,” she said.

That’s right. Amy Tan with her dogs, me with my worms.

Anyway, I think it went well. The interview felt very natural, in part because I did not have to wear headphones. I kind of like the headphones because I can hear my voice and get some idea how it sounds over the radio, filtered through the mike and the mixing board. It makes me sound a little better, a little more polished, a little more NPR, than I do in real life, and it gives me confidence. But there’s an advantage to not wearing them, too: our interview felt more like a conversation, more natural. I forgot that we were live on the radio, being broadcast to over a million listeners.

Wow. Actually, I did not think about it until this very minute. I guess that’s best. I would have frozen for sure.

Lots of people called in. People sent e-mails—when I left, they gave me a stack of a couple dozen of them to take with me. They said it was a surprisingly good response. Diane said I did a great interview. I don’t know, maybe they say that to everybody. I never have any idea how I sound, and when I left, I spent the metro ride back to the hotel doing what I always do after something like this: I re-lived the most awkward moments of the interview and thought of much more clever and interesting things I should have said. Ah well, it’s over now.

Two people wrote in to say how uplifting, how peaceful it was to stop thinking about all the awful things happening in Iraq right now and to think instead of the quiet and beneficial toil of the earthworm.

Lovely. That makes it all worthwhile. Well, almost all: I’d still rather be home right now instead of sitting in still another airport terminal. At least the worms have been spared this indignity. Since I had DC worms with me in the studio, I left them there with the radio station’s staff. I’m worm-free tonight.

2004-05-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday

Did a worm composting demo and signed some books at Green Springs Garden in Alexandria today. They had a plant sale going on; it took a lot of impulse control to walk around and look at plants and not take any home with me.

I did not have to bring a worm bin or worms because they’d arranged for a worm farmer to be there and supply all of that for me. So I didn’t bring any worms with me, but then I realized that it might have been fun to take some worms into the studio with me on Monday when I do the Diane Rehm show. Worms lend themselves to radio, they really do. So I bought a little baggie of castings with some worms in them from the worm farmer and once again, I’m sitting in a hotel room with some worms.

Joined a sweaty throng of my fellow Americans on the mall today. They’re getting set up for the dedication of the WWII monument so the mall was criss-crossed with temporary fencing, stages, tents. A bit of a mess. And here’s a surprise: the landscaping around the mall is really not so hot. I was amazed, for instance, at how weedy the White House lawn was. All around the mall, with a few exceptions near some of the Smithsonian buildings, I saw dull, dismal little plantings like the kind of thing you might see around a dentist office parking lot. Why is that? You’d think that we’d have world-class gardens on the mall, or plantings that show off native plants from across the country, or state wildflowers, or something like that.

Back tomorrow to check out the Smithsonian. The worms will stay in the room. It’s too hot for them out there.

Sunday

Went to the National Archives and saw the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights…it was really moving to see it all…to see the Constitution with Washington’s handwritten corrections, to see the smudged signatures. As I was entering the room, the guy behind me said to his wife, “This isn’t the real Declaration of Independence, right? It’s just a replica.”

Nope. That’s why they call it the National Archives. This is the real deal.

OH—and here’s an idea for the lousy lawn on the Mall (and it really is lousy—I’ll post a picture in a couple of days)—worm castings! How about a National Worm Castings Project on the Mall? They could raise the worms at the National Botanic Garden or maybe at the Natural History museum, some kind of hands-on exhibit using food scraps from the cafeteria, maybe. This lawn needs some help, and I think worms are the answer.

Washington, DC

2004-05-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

I’m in Alexandria, VA, sitting in my hotel room, mulling things over. Today Stephanie (I’m sorry if I have not mentioned Steph earlier in this blog, but after all, this is not a novel, with well-developed characters and skillful plot development, this is just a sporadic diary that is mostly about worms, and Stephanie’s worms all died, which is another story, but anyway, Stephanie and Jim are also the parents of our godchild Max)…so today Stephanie gave birth to our twin (oh, I guess they’re our godchildren, although now that I think about it, have they really asked us? I can’t remember…huh…) well, regardless, she had twin daughters today.
Girls. Wow. Two of them.

Scott was headed down to San Jose anyway to help Jim get the nursery ready, so when he got the call at around 7:30 this morning, he just left early and picked up Max from daycare while Jim was standing heroically by in the delivery room, doing whatever it is fathers do in that situation. The girls came quickly—they were in the world by 11 a.m. or so.

Phoebe and Zoe. Or is it Zoey? How will she spell it? I’ll ask her when I meet her.

So Scott is there, visiting the little girls in the hospital and tucking Max into bed and all kinds of other godparent-like things, and I am wandering around Alexandria in search of a dry Martini. Actually, now that I think about it, this is about par for us.

Girls, this is how your aunt Amy spent the first night of your life: sitting in an Italian restaurant near the Potomac river, sipping a Martini with three strange little black olives in it, eating a vegetarian antipasto platter, and watching this amazing thing that was happening in front of me.
Eight girls, all about 10 years of age, who had just finished some kind of choir concert, were ordering dinner. I know they were in a choir because they all wore black pants or skirts and white shirts, and they broke into well-orchestrated song from time to time. Their parents were seated in the next room; they got to sit by themselves and talk and laugh and be girls out on their own for a little while.

I remember that age so well. Annette, if you’re reading this—you and I met at about that age. How long ago was that? Over twenty years ago. Damn. Somebody bring me another Martini.
Anyway, I watched these girls and I thought about what a perfect, brilliant age that was to be. Girls that age are smart and fearless and beautiful. They are passionate about the world they live in. They are passionate about each other. I sat watching those girls and I thought, at least two of you will still be friends when you’re my age. Someday one of you will be sitting in a bar in a strange town, drinking an ice cold cocktail, while another one of you is in the hospital, your twin daughters under heat lamps, wondering when the next Demerol shot will arrive. Cheers, Steph.

Worm composting workshop at Green Springs Garden Park tomorrow (oh, it’s after midnight…make that today), and then I’ll be exploring our nation’s capitol.

Butterfly Rescue

2004-05-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've been intensely focused on attracting butterflies to my garden this year. Many larval plants--the plants where adult butterflies lay eggs--are impractical for my small space. For instance, this Western Tiger Swallowtail likes willows and sycamores, both of which are much too large. I have put in some milkweed, the preferred food of Monarch caterpillars, but I almost never see a Monarch in my garden.

It's much easier to plant nectar sources for adult butterflies--butterfly bush, pincushion flower, tall verbena, etc. Anything with small flowers and a flat landing space is likely to attract a butterfly. Still, the swallowtails drift through my garden but rarely stop to eat, in spite of the buffet I've put out for them.

This swallowtail landed on a hydrangea bush yesterday. It seemed to hang from a flower, suspended by its proboscis--the long, narrow tube butterflies use to drink. Its wings were wide open, and they did not flutter--the creature was utterly still except when a breeze moved it. I inched close and realized that it was not drinking--the proboscis seemed to be stuck to an outer petal and not even inserted into the center of the flower, where I was not sure it would find much nectar anyway. Was the butterfly stuck, trapped, tired, resting? I didn't know. I thought about rescuing it, urging it off the flower so it would fly away. But I'd spent so much time wishing more butterflies would visit my garden that it seemed silly to shoo this one off.
It sure did look pretty against that light blue hydrangea, though, so I ran inside and got my camera, and also summonded Scott. Fortunately, Scott does not find it at all unusual that I would be so concerned about the fate of one individual butterfly, so he followed me downstairs without hesitation.

When we got there, the butterfly was gone. After a few minutes we noticed it on the ground, which is where I took this picture. Something was wrong. We knew not to touch its wings, which are covered with fine, feathery scales that brush off easily. Instead, we tried to use a stick to get it off the ground in hopes that it would still be able to fly. It fluttered around a little but didn't move much. Finally Scott came outside with a magazine, which I scooted underneath the creature. That seemed to give it enough purchase to get it back into the air. It flew to the top of the hydrangea, waited a minute, and then flew away.

This is, I think, my fourth weekend of Soil Soup brewing. More on that soon.

Soil Soup

2004-05-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

Yipee! My new Soil Soup compost tea home brewer has arrived. I'm off to DC this weekend (tune into the Diane Rehm show on Monday, and if you're listening live and she's taking calls, give us a call!) Anyway, when I get back, I'll brew up a batch and let you know how it works. The brewer came with some worm castings, but of course the goal is to use my own worm castings for the stuff. And no, don't ask me to bottle some up and send it to you--this stuff has to be used FRESH!

Worms in Trees

2004-05-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

Now, here's something to contemplate. A Mercury News story about some research going on in my own backyard--right here in Humboldt County--about the rich life in tree canopies. There's enough soil up there to support earthworms. I don't know about that as a strategy, worms: sure does make for easy pickings for the birds. I suggest the worms re-think going airborne.

There's No Place Like Home

2004-05-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

(continued from yesterday)

And the interview the next morning was fine, of course. The phone worked, there was no static, no one cut in on me, and Michael Olsen did a great interview. As soon as that interview ended, we got into the car and drove right to Elliot Bay for my next talk. I got crankier as we drove, frustrated that we couldn’t find this Indian restaurant in Seattle where we’d been wanting to eat, suffering from both hunger and an upset stomach at the same time, and I’d settled back into worrying about my next event. The time of the event had changed a couple of times and there had not been as much media attention as I would have liked (although that didn’t seen to hurt the Bellingham event, but that sort of logic rarely works with me.)

So we ate a quick lunch near the bookstore and I gave a talk to 5 or 6 people at Elliot Bay. How depressing to talk to such a small audience at such a big bookstore. My heart wasn’t in it, either, so I kept the talk short, answered a few perfunctory questions, and got ready to head home.

But something happened at the end of the talk, as something always does when I least expect it: a middle-aged woman who had been sitting in the back came up to me with a hardcover of my last book, From the Ground Up, and told me that she loved the book, she’d read it over and over, she’d given copies to all her friends, and she’d made a special point of coming down here so I could sign her book. She told me that the book had meant a great deal to her, and to her daughter, who had just started to garden.

Wow. I just don’t know what to say when people come up to me and pour out their hearts about that book. I mean, I’ve had people tell me that the book changed their life. And then they come down and sit through my tedious little talk on worms just so they can meet me. I can’t help but think, what a disappointment it must be for them. I mean, here I am, weary, desperate to get home, not very eloquent, probably nothing like the person they imagined when they read the book.

I signed her book and thanked her for coming. We chatted about her garden, and her daughter’s garden. What else should I have said? I don’t know. I never know in those situations.

Anyway, that’s it. The tour’s over. In a few hours, we’ll be back in Eureka.
Actually, I’m lying when I say the tour’s over. I’m going to DC next weekend. There are a few more events lined up in July. But it’s mostly over, and—hang in there worms—we’re almost home.

P.S. Got home and released the nightcrawlers back into the soil--see photo above--they are plainly delighted to be home, don't you think?

Homeward Bound

2004-05-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

We’re on I-5, somewhere in southern Oregon, headed home at last. This morning I opened up one of my worm containers to see how they were doing and caught a pair of red wigglers in the act. In honor of Mother’s Day, one (or both?) of them were becoming mothers. So I suppose they have not been too unhappy in their confinement or they would not be reproducing. Still, I’m sure they’ll be as happy to get back to their home as I will be.

It’s funny…when I started this book tour, I always planned to leave the worms at my last stop rather than haul them home. But I haven’t been able to do that. They’ve come this far with me; it seems like they deserve to come home, rather than be abandoned in the compost pile of some complete stranger in Portland or Seattle.

A couple of nights ago we drove up to Bellingham for a reading at Village Books. Now, before I begin this story, let me just say that for the last couple of days, I’ve been ready to go home. I was worn out, my stomach was uneasy from so many restaurant meals, I missed my garden, and I was tired of talking about worms. So keep that in mind as you read this next cranky, whiny entry.

We were booked into a B&B for the night in Bellingham, which had caused me a little bit of worry: I had a live, one-hour radio interview with Michael Olsen the next morning by phone, and I was concerned that there would not be a phone in the room I could use. I don’t get very nervous about radio interviews, but what I do worry about is the logistics: if it’s in person, I worry about getting there in time, and if it’s on the phone, I worry about having a good working phone that will not be tied up by someone else or have static on the line or anything like that. In other words, I worry about the picky little details surrounding the interview, but the interview itself doesn’t concern me at all.

So my publicist, who books this stuff, checked it out in advance and made sure there’d be a good working phone. Well, there was, but it turned out to be a cordless phone, not an old-fashioned, plug-it-into-the-wall phone, and I worried about static on the line. It was an extension of a phone line that seemed to serve the entire B&B, so I worried that someone else would pick up the phone while I was on it.

As I said, I was a little tired and punchy by this time. I was ready to go home. I was getting cranky.

So I didn’t like the B&B from the beginning because I was already predisposed to be freaked out about the phone. From the outside, the place was a pleasant Victorian house, but inside, oh, good lord. It was as if a manufacturer of plastic flowers had gone out of business and the innkeeper had bought the entire warehouse. Really, I have never seen so many plastic flowers in one place. And you must understand that I am personally offended by fake flowers, unless they are truly, obviously fake, like those enormous paper flowers you can buy in Mexico, or artsy glass flowers, or something like that.

But to just put pots of plastic geraniums around the living room—really, there’s no excuse for that.

So the front parlors were pretty offensive, with their fake flowers and tasteless chintz and general country frilliness. Now, remember, I live in a Victorian house, and while I don’t like ornate Victorian decorations, I understand what an authentic Victorian parlor might look like, and this is not it. Let us proceed to the bedroom, which we documented with photographs, so that you can see what I was up against for the evening.

In the bedroom, we had:

Floral print sheets, bedspread, and wallpaper.

Fake ivy draped around the room near the ceiling, and other plastic flowers tucked in wherever there was room for them.

Two bedside garden nymph lamps that hung from the ceiling. Around the nymphs were clear wires from which oil dripped, in an attempt to simulate, I suppose, a waterfall.

A large gold fish and angel sculpture on the wall above the TV. The sculpture did have an electrical cord coming out of it, but it was not plugged in and we could not figure out what it would do if it was plugged in.

A pair of windows that looked not out to the garden, but into a stairwell that had obviously been added after the house was built. These windows were fringed with lacy curtains and faced the stairwell wall directly across, which had been papered with some of that photo-realistic wallpaper.

The image? A garden, of course. A field of tulips. More plastic flowers sat in a windowbox to contribute to the natural effect. There was also a dimmer switch that controlled a light in the stairwell, allowing guests to simulate any time of day in the garden by raising or lowering the light level.

I just can’t tell you how miserable this room made me feel. I was so tired, and so ready to go home.

We certainly weren’t going to spend any time in the terrifying garden room, so we dropped our suitcases off and ran. Bellingham has a cute little old downtown, but we were tired of cute little downtowns, too. We had a dull little dinner at an Italian restaurant and wandered over to the bookstore, where I was expecting a dull and poorly-attended reading.

Boy, was I wrong. A half an hour before the reading, there were already people milling around, saving seats. Before I started talking, I counted about 25-30 in the audience, and after about 15 minutes, the crowd had grown closer to 50.

And there were some serious worm people there: worm farmers, worm composting educators, and lots of people who already have a worm bin. They asked interesting questions. One guy had noticed that his red wigglers change color slightly in different food stock—what did I know about that? Gee whiz, nothing, I told him, but I’d check it out. Someone else thought that there had just been a sighting of the nearly-extinct giant Palouse earthworm, something else I hadn’t heard. There were organic farmers in the audience, and schoolchildren, and everybody wanted to come up afterwards and hold the worms and tell me more worm stories. It was an amazing evening, one of the best events on the book tour.

So we went back to the room in much better spirits. I had noticed that Andrei Codrescu, whose new book Wakefield is also published by Algonquin, was going to be in Bellingham in a month or so, so I scouted around town and found a better hotel for him.

I’m a big Andrei Codrescu fan, so Andrei, this is my gift to you: you do not have to lay your head to rest in the Scary Garden Room. The mere thought of you going through this would have kept me up all night. There’s a nice normal little hotel in town, just behind the bookstore, and I’m sending the information about it to Algonquin. You can thank me later. (Although Scott points out that if you’re looking for material for your next NPR commentary, who knows, maybe you’ll find it here and not at the nice little inoffensive hotel by the bookstore. Well, I’ll leave it up to you.)

We turned off all the lights in the Scary Garden Room, so we could see as little of it as possible, and watched the playback on CSPAN of Rumsfeld testifying about prisoner abuse in Iraq. That was enough to banish the sticky sweetness from the room. Only the fish-and-angel wall statue glowed slightly from the light of the TV.(to be continued tomorrow.)

Soil Soup

2004-05-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

We finally got some of that famous Seattle rain. Driving up to Bellingham today for a reading in their historic Fairhaven district. Last night I read at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island--another good crowd, 20 people or so. To think they chose worms over the final episode of Friends. One of my favorite garden writers, Ann Lovejoy, lives on the island and she came to the reading, but she had to leave early so I didn't get to say hello. One woman who came to the reading said she was buying the book for her daughter--when her daughter started a garden for the first time, she'd sent some worms from her own garden to get her started. Wow. The things people will do.

Also met a guy from Soil Soup, a company that makes compost tea brewers. This is the hot new thing to do with worm castings--brew up a tea that you can spray around the garden. Really makes a little go a long way. He's offered to send me one to try out. Who am I to say no?

More Seattle Fun

2004-05-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, Seattle, with its clean air, crisp snowy horizon, two dueling newspapers, and pleasant debates over the future of the monorail. This is a smart and lively city, and as Scott and I sat in the restaurant on top of the Space Needle, watching the skyline drift slowly past, I told him I could imagine us living here in one of those snappy waterfront condos. It would be an urban existence, totally different than our own. “The traffic is awful here,” he said. “We’d never drive,” I said. “We’d take the monorail.” “I prefer Portland,” he said. “Portland’s nice too,” I said.

That’s how it is on a book tour like this—you visit one city after another, someone else is paying for your meals and your room, you have your days free, and you start to imagine that this could be your life.

Had a great reading at the university last night. 25 or 30 people, and they were a very happy crowd, very ready to laugh, even at things I did not intend to be funny. I felt like a standup comedian at times, they laughed so much.

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll move to Seattle and become a standup comedian.

One of the guys at the reading last night told me he used to pick nightcrawlers for bait. That was his job, outside at night in the wet grass. “Sign the book to Dr. Mold,” he said. “That’s what my PhD is in. Molds.”

He told me he’d like to write a book about molds. I told him to figure out what the story is first. The narrative, the characters, the essential plot, concerning molds. I’m sure there is one.With the exception of these events in the evening, the worms have been in the hotel room all week, enjoying the peace and quiet.

Seattle, City of Worms

2004-05-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

I’m in Seattle. Scott’s been gone for an hour and a half—he went to Spokane tonight for a business meeting tomorrow—and already I have that morose, lonely feeling that I get when I travel alone. I had dinner alone (oh, if you are in Seattle, you must check out Palace Kitchen) and sat there nursing a Martini and wishing I wasn’t drinking it alone. It’s just funny how quickly I can start to feel sorry for myself when I’m left alone in a strange city.
But really, I love Seattle. I walked back to the hotel tonight and looked up at the skyscrapers all around me, lit up against the sky, and a full moon that kept appearing and disappearing from behind the clouds. There’s nothing like the thrill of a big city.

So…what have I been up to…we drove up to Eugene on Friday, spent the night with family, and on Saturday I got to meet the editor of Worm Digest, Zorba Frankel, and do a worm composting workshop alongside him. We held the workshop at Down To Earth Home & Garden—really, this is an incredibly hip place and if you are ever in Eugene, you must stop in. It’s a nursery and a garden supply center and they sell their own line of worm castings and compost, and all kinds of other stuff you can’t live without. Several people had attended a worm composting workshop hosted by the city earlier that day, and they stopped by my talk afterward. One guy even brought the worms he’d purchased at the morning workshop. “You understand that you don’t need to bring the worms everywhere with you?” I asked.

He assured me that he’d take them straight home.

We headed to Portland that night to stay with some friends, and on Sunday I did a talk at Portland Nursery. They had worm bins for sale and a worm farmer showed up at the talk and offered her card to anyone who wanted to buy worms. I also stopped at Powell’s to sign books and—can you believe this—they actually have a section just for worms. It’s right in between the sections for bees and chickens. Man, that’s such an incredible bookstore. I only had an hour to spend there, and I nearly wept when it was time to go.

Tonight I gave a talk at Third Place Books and handed out the business cards of a worm farmer I met at Pike’s Market this morning. He was selling worm tea in little juice bottles. “I have to explain to people that it’s not for them to drink,” he said. Only in Seattle would people assume that something marked “Worm Juice” would be a beverage for them.

Anyway, it was a good reading at Third Place Books—they’re a big, well-stocked independent bookstore just north of Seattle and they had a nice setup for me and the worms. Tonight the worms and I are on our own at the hotel, and tomorrow I’ve got a radio interview in the morning, a talk at the University bookstore in the evening, and time to kill until Scott gets back to Seattle. Sleep well.

Worms on the Radio

2004-04-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I’d spent another day without worms or anything worm-related, that I’d taken a healthy little break from all things worm-related so I could get some perspective before the next leg of the book tour, but no. This morning I started to get nervous about my Seattle events—would there be enough media coverage? Should I have reached out to garden groups more? Would it matter that the time for the event at Elliot Bay had already changed twice and all the postcards I sent out had the wrong time? In short, would anyone show up?

Sigh. Yes, I’m sure it will be fine, and my very kind and patient publicist assured me that it would be fine, but I still spent the morning looking up e-mail addresses online—public gardens, nurseries, recycling groups, anyone who might be interested—and sent them e-mails with a list of events.

If you’re in Seattle, please come see me at Elliot Bay next Saturday, May 8, at 2 p.m. It’ll make me feel so much better.And check out my interview on To the Best of Our Knowledge. It’s about midway through the hour if you want to skip ahead, but I won’t mind if you listen to the other guys, too.

2004-04-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

No worms today. Nothing at all worm-related happening in my life at this very moment. I did not even feed the worms coffee grounds this morning. Tomorrow I will, I’m sure. Right now, I’m just rushing around, catching up on some missed deadlines, doing laundry, and getting some rest (that’s a lie, I’m not getting any rest) before the Oregon/Washington leg.

Home, and a Martini

2004-04-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

Ooooh, you have no idea how good it feels to be home. Not just home, but home with an ice cold martini in my hand. Ah, life is good.
Had a long day today—got up before 7 a.m. (ouch!) for a 9 a.m. radio show in Point Reyes Station. Fortunately, it was an easy drive through beautiful countryside and the radio show itself—an hour, live, in studio—was very laid-back and fun. The name of the show is “The Vicarious Traveler”—because it’s a travel show, I talked about my travels to research the book, and the many journeys that earthworms have made around the world. After the show there was just enough time for a cup of coffee before I gave a talk at Point Reyes Books—there were probably only 10 or 12 people there, but as always, they were an enthusiastic crowd and they all bought books.

Then we headed to the Marin Art & Garden Center. They were holding their spring art & flower festival, which included a plant sale, something I zeroed in on as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. I’ve been away from the garden for almost two weeks, and I was ready to get some plants in the ground. So Scott unloaded the worm bin—I was doing a vermiculture workshop at 1:00—while I rounded up as many plants as I thought would fit in the car.

This workshop turned out to be a great way to end the tour. There were probably around 30 or 40 people there, and Book Passage was on hand to sell books. One couple came up to me and said they had read my first book aloud to one another. Another woman, who had been a science teacher, came with some of her former students who were clearly quite devoted to her. She was a worm enthusiast and apparently a fan of my work…now, I should stop here and say how odd this is…I cannot quite get used to the idea that someone, a complete stranger, has read my book and rearranged their schedule to come meet me…I seem so utterly uninteresting to myself, so I can hardly comprehend something like this. In Davis, a friend of a friend drove 4 hours from Fresno just to meet me. Why, why? I try to think of someone I would drive 4 hours to meet, and no one, except some famous dead people, come to mind.

As soon as I got home (that’s a 5-hour drive, folks, after 3 events today, not that I’m complaining) I released the worms back into their natural habitats. The nightcrawlers did not look good. They’ve been on the road too long, as have I. Five days at home, just enough time to do laundry, get caught up on e-mail, and get ready to do it all over again. I’m headed to Oregon, Washington, and DC in May, then I’m done. Meanwhile, tune in to To the Best of Our Knowledge around April 25 for their Good Earth show, and check out the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle’s Home and Garden section if you’re in the Bay Area.

Sweet dreams…I just hope that, for once, I don’t dream about worms…

Livermore and Beyond

2004-04-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve had a good internet connection. Let’s see, what’s happened since then? After Berkeley we went back to Santa Rosa and hung around my parents’ house all morning. I had a pre-interview for a radio show I’m doing tomorrow, and also an hour-long, live public radio call-in show that I did by phone with a station in Illinois. Once again, there were farmers calling in asking questions about the earthworms in their fields and what impact agricultural chemicals might have on them. It’s really quite gratifying to hear that farmers are so concerned about worms.
Then it was on to Livermore for a reading at Altamont Books in Livermore. We were a small group (including three people from my family, and maybe 10 or so total in the audience), but that was fine—I gave my usual talk and spent more time than usual on questions, showed off the worms, and that was that. That night we drove to Montara, on the coast, to spend the night. I had a TV taping in San Mateo the next morning and I wanted to be close so I wouldn’t have to worry too much about rush hour traffic.

The TV show is Henry’s Garden on KRON. It’ll be broadcast in the Bay Area sometime in June. It’s a very laid-back, funny show that Henry, the host, films in his own backyard. I pulled out my largest and most impressive nightcrawler, and it showed off for the camera, slithering up Henry’s arm and reaching a length of eight, maybe ten inches. We did a short segment on how to increase the worm population in soil, filming it all the way through in one take, and then I packed the worms up and we headed on to the next stop—Placerville, on the other side of Sacramento.

Placerville’s a charming little town in the foothills. Hidden Passage Books is a small shop and we had a small crowd again—maybe eight people—but they were very enthusiastic and everyone bought books and asked questions and we all sat around drinking wine and talking about worms, so what more could I want? The bookstore owners put us up in a charming little hotel on Main Street, and we spent the whole afternoon in the room, enjoying the luxury of a few hours where nothing was scheduled.

Up in the morning and off to Sacramento. I had a live in-studio appearance on a TV show called Good Day Sacramento. Now, here’s something surprising about being on TV: at both of the shows I’ve done this week, there was no real time or place to do anything about my appearance. When I first thought about doing TV, I assumed that I would show up and someone would do my makeup or whatever. It’s a good thing I had some media training before I did this, because my trainer explained that I needed to show up fully made up, dressed, and ready to walk on camera. Sure enough, that’s exactly how this has worked. I sat around in the lobby of the TV station, looking like a clown with all the blush and lipstick, blinking through my mascara, until a few minutes before my segment, when they marched me without ceremony onto the set, and I sat on the sidelines until it was time.

This was one of those chatty morning shows with two hosts in armchairs. I sat on the sofa and talked about worms, pulled out a nightcrawler and let it show off for the camera, and even took a few phone calls from viewers. Not all the calls had to do with worms—one woman called to ask about a strange insect that was eating her fruit tree, and I just had to make my best guess.

Both of the TV appearances I’ve done in the last couple of days have passed so quickly. I can’t believe how fast 5 minutes goes by on TV. Scott says I did pretty well, although it is so strange for him to see me in makeup (strange for me, too) that he can’t really tell whether or not I looked natural on camera. Everything about it seems so artificial. The worms, however, looked just fine.

All of these early mornings are wearing me out. We spent the day with family and all I wanted to do was crawl into the guest room and try to sleep. Tonight I had a reading at Avid Reader in Davis—a good crowd, including many friends and family—and an only-in-Davis question: when you buy worm castings from a worm farm, have the worms been mistreated? (Picture worms chained to some kind of machine where they are forced to eat and…well, you get the idea.)

I assured the audience that worms on worm farms are well-fed and cared for, and gently separated from their castings when the time comes.

We’re on the way to Novato now—another early morning tomorrow, but fortunately it’s radio, which means no make-up. The only thing worse than waking up to an alarm clock is waking up to an alarm clock and then having to slather TV makeup all over my face.

Book Passage

2004-04-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

A great day yesterday. Had a fun interview with a newspaper reporter—he’d obviously thought a lot about organic gardening and farming and how earthworms relate to that, so we had an interesting conversation about worldwide food production and soil fertility and all kinds of wide-ranging topics.

Then I was off to Book Passage and man, what a place to read. I mean, I’ve always loved hanging out there as a customer, but they really give authors the royal treatment. They wouldn’t let Scott and I pay for our lunches in the café, I got a really nice, thoughtful introduction before my talk, and afterwards, the staff gave me what turns out to be the traditional gift for authors who read at Book Passage: notecards embossed with my name.
I feel so unworthy.

I mean, T.C. Boyle, one of my favorite authors, has these notecards.

And now I know where he got them. I got mine from the same place.

Damn.

Oh, and by the way, the talk went just fine, too. There were probably 30 people or so, many of them part of the Master Composter program in Marin. I’ll probably see some of them again on Saturday at the Marin Art & Garden Center, where I’m going to do more of a straightforward worm composting workshop.

After Corte Madera, we headed to Berkeley. I stopped at the two Cody’s locations to sign stock. While I was on Telegraph, I went into Moe’s and they had a couple copies in their new book section. I took them up to the counter, explained that I was out on my book tour, and the woman behind the counter said, “Do you have the worms with you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“No, I mean with you, right now.”

“Yeah, they’re right here in my bag,” I said.

“Oh, we’ll need to see them,” she said, so I pulled out the red wigglers, showed them off to the staff, and, having seen the proof, they let me sign books.

The workshop at Berkeley Ecology Center went well, too. I was warned that lots of people would wander in late, and that at least one person was certain to arrive just before the end of the workshop. Sure enough, there were only 5 or 6 people there when I started talking at 7:00, but by 7:30 there were probably 20 or 25 people in the audience. And as promised, a woman walked in at 8:15, just before the end of the workshop.

This Berkeley audience was probably the most sophisticated I’ve encountered yet. Many of them were already composting with worms, a few had taught worm composting workshops, they knew lots of obscure worm facts, and had very pointed and thoughtful questions. (if you feed worms dryer lint, what about the synthetic fibers in your laundry? Is it OK to feed worms horse manure if the horses have been given de-worming pills? What species of worms should I expect to find in the native plant creek restoration I’m working on?)

Whew! OK, Berkeley, I’ll check on all that and get back to you. People always ask me if I’m going to write a sequel (The Earth Kept On Moving? The Earth Moved Some More?) and if I keep getting questions like these, I may need to do one after all!

Back In San Francisco

2004-04-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

It was a drizzly day in San Francisco yesterday. Scott stayed behind at my parents’ house to get some work done on his magazine, so I’d be spending the day by myself. I got to Yerba Buena around 12:30, drove around until I found a parking garage, and hauled the laptop and the worms to the Zeum Theater, where the California Academy of Science is holding its lecture series while its permanent facility is being renovated.

I was their monthly guest lecturer—this is a free lecture for members and I think it cost $8 or so for non-members. The theater seats about 175 people—large enough that it made sense to bring the laptop and do a slide show with some photos of worms.

There were 50 people in the afternoon lecture, including a woman who sang a worm song to me. The song was actually a jingle on WKRP—the sponsor for Les Nesman’s show was “Red wigglers, the Cadillac of worms.”

Wow. Now, I’d forgotten all about that.

About 40-50 showed up for the evening lecture also, and this time there was a guy who told me a worm joke. This one loses something on the printed page because there's a little pantomime you need to do at the end, but I’ll do my best:

Guy goes ice fishing for the first time. There’s another guy out on the ice who’s clearly more experienced, so he turns to him and says, “Hey, this is my first time ice fishing. Got any advice for me?”

The fisherman says, “mmph mmph mmph mmph.”

“What was that?”

“Mmph mmph mmph mmph.”

“Sorry, I still can’t understand what you’re saying.”

The guy reaches in his mouth and pulls out a couple of nightcrawlers. “Keep your worms warm!” he says.

Ah, tales from the road. In between talks, I walked down to Stacey’s on Market Street to sign copies of the book. So far they hold the record with four copies in stock, and a couple paperbacks of From the Ground Up. Then I walked all the way to Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books at the Civic Center, only to find one copy on the shelves. They had five or six, they told me, but they’d all sold. So I signed the one copy and headed back to Union Square for dinner before the evening talk. Got back to Santa Rosa at about 10:30 last night and fell into bed. Just finished a newspaper interview by phone, and in a few minutes I’m off to Corte Madera for a talk at Book Passage, then to Berkeley for a workshop this evening at the Berkeley Ecology Center.

Palo Alto

2004-04-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Palo Alto yesterday around noon for my talk at Common Ground, an organic garden supply company. This was one of the few true worm composting workshops I did on the tour. About twenty people had called in advance to sign up. That’s a good crowd—a manageable number for a pretty interactive workshop. I had a stacking worm bin with me (sans worms, of course) so I could explain how it worked, and I had the worms on hand in their little plastic containers as always.

As I got started, people kept rolling in. The staff brought in more chairs, and finally the stools that were behind the counter, and a few of the garden benches they sell, until every chair and perch in the place was in use and there were 50 people in the room. About a dozen already had worm bins; many more were ready to buy one. It went very well—I got through the whole thing in about an hour, lots of people bought books, and we were on our way. Lots of cities and counties in the Bay Area sell worm bins to their residents, but the staff at Common Ground said they’d like to carry them too, so I gave them a few suggestions about suppliers. If you’re in the area and you’re looking for worms or bins, you might stop in and see what they’ve been able to put together.

After lunch, we stopped at Kepler’s in Menlo Park so I could sign stock. The idea is that if I swing by and autograph some copies, they’ll put an “autographed copy” sticker on them and put them on display, the books will sell better, and it just raises awareness in general around the bookstore. Also, I like to stop in and chat with the booksellers and thank them for supporting the book.

So Kepler’s knew I was coming and they’d ordered a dozen or so books, but like Bookshop a few days ago, they’d sold most of them by the time I got there and I only had 3 copies to sign. Ah well, at least it's selling!

Drove up to Santa Rosa last night for a radio interview with food author Michele Anna Jordan on her program “Mouthful.” We chatted for about twenty minutes—I like these live, chatty, interactive radio programs—and then went on to my parents’ house and to bed.

Today I have two talks at the California Academy of Science, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, and I’m hoping to swing by a couple more bookstores to sign stock.

More Notes from the Road

2004-04-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 15, Santa Rosa

I left San Jose at 11 to get to Crissy Field in San Francisco at 1:00. There was some traffic on 101 so I sat on the highway for a lot longer than I thought I would. At fifteen minutes before the event was scheduled to begin, I was just turning onto Lombard, still a couple miles from the event and not sure exactly where it was.

Ah, this is what I bought the cell phone for. But the only number I had was the office number of the person who set up the event—not a phone that would actually ring where I was scheduled to be. Ack. But I made it just in time and waltzed in with my worms. They’d set me up in a meeting room with a projector and a laptop.

Oh yeah, I have some slides on a CD. Where is that CD? I ran out to the car and brought it in. By then a couple people were sitting in the folding chairs, waiting for me. A few more people wandered in before the talk started. But it was a sparse crowd, to say the least. I went through the slides and launched into my talk about how I came to write the book. Over the next half hour, more people wandered in, but most of them had kids with them. And I’m not talking about 12-year olds—these were 5 and 6-year olds. Should I shift gears and make this into a talk for kids? I don’t know. It’s hard to do, midstream. And is there anything about my standard sort of talk that is age-inappropriate? What can I say about how worms mate? Can I make my little joke about how Darwin noticed that worms would continue mating even if they were exposed to light, proving that their aversion to light was not purely instinct but somehow governed by the worms’ ability to make decisions, to choose between mating and diving away from the light?

I mean, how does that information compare to what kids see in the average Pepsi commercial? All these questions and more run through my head as I finish my talk and pull a couple worms out of the dirt and hold them out to the kids. They are mostly girls, and they are all eager to hold the worms.

Saturday, April 17, 2004 San Jose

I was on a radio show called Garden Talk at Santa Rosa’s KSRO for an hour this morning. We had a good time—the two hosts were really laid-back and fun, and we had lots of calls from people who had questions about worms. My hour on the show ended at 10 and I headed down to Carmel—about a 3-hour drive—for a talk at Thunderbird Books.

The Buick I rented makes a little beep when it’s about to run out of gas. Good thing, because I was just blasting down the freeway to Carmel and not paying the slightest attention to the gas gauge. I can just see myself stranded by the side of the road, breathing into a paper bag and trying not to freak out about being late for my next event.

But I got the gas in time and made it to Carmel with an hour or two to spare. Enough time to grab some lunch and do a little shopping for a TV appearance on Thursday. Everything I have with me seems a little too dressy—this guy films the show mostly in his own backyard, and he usually wears jeans, so I think I need to be a little more casual. Fortunately one of the women who works at Macy’s has seen the show, so she helps me pick some stuff out. Between the new clothes (two outfits, the first too formal and ultimately rejected) and the TV makeup, this is going to be the most expensive 5 minutes of my life.

The talk at Thunderbird went fine. There were only about 12 people there, but as always, they were enthusiastic and full of burning worm-related questions. Two people took notes. I pulled out the largest of the three nightcrawlers and it impressed the crowd with its antics. Of course, I spilled dirt all over the table and made quite a mess, but nobody seemed to mind.

Santa Rosa

2004-04-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight’s event at Copperfield’s in Santa Rosa was a benefit for the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. They got a percentage from every book sold tonight and in the last few weeks. I hear they have a pretty amazing worm bin setup—15 or so big wooden bins that fill an area as large as the wing of the bookshop where I was reading.

It was another pretty good crowd—a few people wandered in late and I think that by the end of the evening we had 25 or 30, including a few that just happened to be in the store, heard me talking, and wandered over to hear more. As usual, there were several people in the audience who had some experience with worms—people who already had a worm bin, or were planning to buy one, and some gardeners who bragged about their own worm populations. There’s always a strange cranky guy in the audience—some guy who knows a couple of weird worm facts and wants to share them with the group. So we had one of those, too.

I’m a little worried about this clear gel I’m putting the worms in for these talks. It’s worked fine up to now, but lately the worms seem to be getting odd little injuries while they’re in this stuff. One nearly severed a tail, and I’m sure nobody who had been handling it had done anything that would have injured it, and another seemed to have burst a blood vessel tonight. So I’m going to quit using the stuff and just pull them out of the dirt to show them to people. It means that my hands will always be dirty and I’ll always have to travel with paper towels and those little hand wipes, but at least I won’t have to worry about any more worm injuries. They seem perfectly content in their little plastic tubs of dirt.

Tomorrow we get up early and head down to Santa Cruz. I’m going to stop by Bookshop Santa Cruz to sign stock, and then I have a reading tomorrow night at Capitola Book Café. This is my former hometown, so it should be a great crowd.

Thursday, April 15, Highway 17

Scott’s driving us to San Jose and I’m blogging, here in the dark car, with the laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter. Tonight was Capitola Book Café. I knew this would be a good event—I expected a few friends to turn out, and there had been a nice article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, but I was still surprised to walk in and find that people were already jostling for seats near the front fifteen minutes before I was supposed to speak. A woman at the counter was holding a copy of my book and asking whether the author could sign it for her now because she had to leave early; the staff looked a little flustered so I sidled up alongside her and said, “Would you like the author to sign that? I think we can arrange it.”

Those are fun little author moments. I inscribed two copies for her.

I had a very appreciative crowd of 40-50 people tonight, including a woman who teaches worm composting workshops around town. She got a little extra publicity for her workshop alongside the notices that ran in the paper about my book, so much so that her workshop sold out and she’s having to schedule another one. So I made an announcement about that and let everyone know that they could buy worms from her, too.

People often bought my last book as a gift; it was so small and charming that it made a nice present. I don’t really expect anyone to give a worm book as a gift, but you’d be surprised how many I sign with the words “Happy Birthday” or “Congratulations on your new home.” Worm lovers are very sincere in their affection for the creatures and are genuinely happy to share their enthusiasm.

I didn’t put the worms in the Soil Moist tonight. I just pulled them out of the dirt and set them on my palm. The bookstore supplied some towels so I had some way to clean myself up before I signed books. It wasn’t so bad. I’d rather keep the worms happy.

I keep waiting for a bad event, one in which nobody shows up and it’s just me and the worms and the bookstore staff and I have to try to pretend that I don’t mind. It hasn’t happened yet, though. Tonight we sleep in San Jose and tomorrow I head to Crissy Field for a talk at their bookstore/visitors center, then I’m back in Santa Rosa for the night because I’ve got an hour-long radio interview there on Saturday morning. Back and forth, across the Golden Gate Bridge. These will be well-traveled worms before it’s all over.

Blogging from the Road

2004-04-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

Here I am, blogging from the road as promised. Last night was my first event of the Bay Area tour. I got into Sonoma at around five and dropped by Readers Books to say hello. For some reason--and there was no good reason for me to have this feeling--but for some reason I thought this would be a really small event. There hadn't been a great deal of media coverage--just a small article in the newspaper, which was taped up in the window of the bookstore when I arrived--and a very short radio interview. I don't have a very extensive Sonoma mailing list so I'd only sent out a few postcards.

But the owner said they'd been getting good crowds for their events and pointed out that the Tuesday evening farmers market always brings people into town. Scott and I went for a walk around the square, had a little dinner, and returned to the bookstore around 7. There were quite a few people milling around. I snuck into the bathroom with my worms to get them cleaned up for their appearance. I always take them out of the dirt and put them in this clear polymer gel called Soil Moist at these events. Usually you mix a few Soil Moist crystals into potting soil to hold water and release it when the soil dries out, but I just use it straight as a temporary worm medium. They don't exactly love the stuff, but they'll tolerate it and it keeps them clean, which makes it easier for me to handle them.

Now, here's an etiquette question: when you're in the ladies' room rinsing off your worms and someone else walks in, should you warn them that you have worms in your hand, or make any mention of it at all? I mean, I'd hate for someone to walk up to the sink next to me to touch up their lipstick, get a look at the nightcrawler in my hand, and freak out. How do you handle a situation like that? I haven't quite figured it out.

By the time I started my talk, there were over 30 people in the audience. My fears about this being a small event were totally unfounded--30 is a great crowd for me. As always, they asked lots of questions and came up afterwards to see the worms and get books signed.

Tonight I'll be at Copperfield's in Montgomery Village at 7 p.m. They've set up the event as a benefit for the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

2004-04-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

I'm rushing around tonight getting ready to leave for the book tour. TV makeup? Check.
Toothbrush? Check. Compost bin? Check. Worms? Check.

It's gonna be quite a trip. 15 events and 6 interviews between now and next Saturday.
So this will have to be short--but I wanted to pass on some important infomation on worms and truffles. Also, say hello to the Worm Capital of the World. Before you go, brace yourself for a pretty slimy and squirmy worm photo.

I'm all set to blog from the road, so tune in tomorrow night after my talk at Readers Books in Sonoma. (and hey, if you're in the neighborhood, stop by!)

At the Airport

2004-04-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 8, 2004 Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Airport, 10:10 a.m.

Ah, the glamorous life of an author. My flight's delayed. Wind out of Chicago is preventing planes from taking off. When I arrived at the airport, I found out that United had re-booked me on a flight tomorrow, but fortunately someone found a spot for me on a later flight today. If I’m lucky, my plane will take off at 2:00, but they’ve already told me that the more likely departure time will be 3:20. That means I’ll land in Chicago just as my flight to SFO is boarding. So if all goes well, I’ll sprint to my gate, get to SFO by dinnertime, and be home by around 9:00 tonight. Good thing I brought the laptop. I can get some work done.

Deposited the worms in an undisturbed section of Carl’s compost pile before I left. I think they’ll be happy there, and it will spare them another journey in the baggage hold.

On Earth as it is in Iowa City

2004-04-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 7, 2004 WSUI/KSUI Radio, 9:51 a.m.

Carl drops me off at the radio station and we agree to meet at Prairie Lights at noon and go to lunch from there. For such a small town, this is a surprisingly well-equipped and, as I come to learn, well-supported public radio station. The host of “Talk of Iowa,” Ben Kieffer, tells me that the average contribution by their members is among the highest in the country at over $100 per year, and that their day sponsor program, which lets a sponsor play a message on the air at several points during a particular day in exchange for a dollar-a-day annual contribution, is almost oversubscribed. Now, that’s my kind of public radio station. The staff at our local Humboldt County station, KHSU, would be green with envy to see the kinds of resources these folks have.

Fortunately, Sam James’ mother heard an announcement about the show and called the station to suggest that they add her son to the lineup, so Sam was on by phone. Ben also invited Mark Muller, a naturalist and artist and conservationist who has his own track record educating kids about soil biology. This has included baking a chocolate worm cake for kids that contains actual nightcrawlers, the idea being that, when the cake is sliced, the cross-section resembles a cross-section of soil. And the kids are all too happy, especially if their parents are watching, to take a bite of cake or even pull a worm out and eat it whole.

Yeeeech.

Ben promises that we’ll have callers during the hour. I’m never convinced that anyone will call a radio station to talk about worms, but Ben knows his audience, and sure enough, as soon as he invites listeners to call in, the phones light up. One guy has some questions about eating worms. Mark explains that he feeds them cornmeal for a couple weeks first to get the dirt out of their intestines, and I wonder about using worms in sushi, given worms’ longstanding and usually fatal association with fish as bait. Sam jumps in to explain that wasabi mixed with water is one substance that you can pour into the soil to force worms to the surface; they would, he said, emerge “pre-wasabi-ed” if you did that.

So you can see what kind of show it was. But the best moment in the show came when a farmer called to say that he was just about to head outside to plow his field and wondered now if he should think twice about it, given what we’d said about how much worms hate disturbed soil. We talked a little about no-till agriculture and the benefits of leaving the soil ecology intact, and then another call came through, this one from a farmer who was in the cab of his tractor at that moment and wanted to talk more about this no-till issue. What a connection to make with people! That’s the power of radio, and also the power of worms.

Here are Mark and Ben.

Prairie Lights, 2:10 p.m.

Lunch just around the corner from Prairie Lights with Carl and one of the bookstore’s managers, Jan Weismiller. Carl won’t let me pay for a thing, in spite of my insistence that I’m on my publisher’s dime. Good thing I remembered to bring him a bottle of wine from home. I may have to ship him a case.

Jan’s one of those committed booksellers (and she’s also a writer) who is just steeped in Iowa City’s rich literary culture. I asked Carl if people graduate from the university and never want to leave, and he said yes, that’s exactly what happens. The cashier at the grocery store has a PhD in comparative literature. It’s that kind of town.

I’m going to talk to some graduate students at 3:30. We’ve got some time, so Carl takes me for a drive in the country. He tells me that he wants to show me a farmhouse that he and Kate always wanted to buy. (Kate, the practical one, said it didn’t make sense to live so far away from the hospital, the grocery store, the university, and their friends. She was right, of course.)
I’m looking for landscapes to photograph so I’ll have something to paint in my oil painting class.

We turn a corner and I see an old limestone farmhouse with a big red barn and a shiny metal water tower next to it. “Stop here!” I said. “I want a picture.”

Carl laughed. “This is our house,” he said, pulling into the driveway. “We never did get a chance to buy it, but we did get to go inside once. You can ride a horse in the front door and straight out the back door.” Here's the house.

University of Iowa English Department, 4:35 p.m.

A small but enthusiastic group of students show up at my talk this afternoon. They want to hear about writing—how do I conduct research, how do I figure out what the story is, how do I weave in the personal, memoir-like side of the story with the research and the facts.

It’s fun to talk shop for a little while. Nobody asks me about this stuff while I’m on the book tour. They’re all there for the worms. It’s not often that’s it’s really about me.

Verizon Wireless Hell, 5:14 p.m.
(aka, Why I Hate Cell Phones, Reason Number 7,128)

Just got my first voice mail message on my cell phone. It is at this very moment that I realize that I have no idea how to retrieve voice mail, although I have been through the process to set it up. I follow the menu on the phone’s readout screen but get nowhere. It seems to dial some number—*628 or something like that—but I am not able to connect. I call the Verizon help line but I’m put on hold for what begins to seem like an expensive length of time. I’m a little anxious to get this message because hardly anyone has this number and they know they should only call it if it’s something important.

Carl also has Verizon but he’s no help. At nearly twice my age, he and I are perfectly aligned on the subject of cellular phones. “I don’t really know how to use mine either,” he tells me sympathetically. “I never have gotten into my voice mail.” But then he remembers that he’s pretty sure he was able to check it from Hawaii once, and there’s no reason mine shouldn’t work from Iowa.

Finally I get to a land line and call Verizon. I explain the problem and here is what the man says:

“You can’t dial star-whatever-it-is and access your voice mail when you’re away from your home area.”

“You mean I can’t check my voice mail when I’m on the road?” I ask.

“Right,” he says. “You can only dial that access number from your home area.”

“So if I’m traveling, which is the whole reason I got the phone in the first place, I am totally unable to check my messages?”

“Well,” he says, “You can call your cell phone number, and when you hear your outgoing message—”

“Call my cell phone number using what?” I say in what I think is a fairly patient voice.

“From a land line,” he says. “Call your cell from a land line, and then you can press a key to get into your voice mail”

I pause for a minute to take this in, and then begin again, very sweetly. “So can you see how if I had access to a land line, I wouldn’t need the cell phone?” I asked. “And can you also see that if I was in my home area, I also wouldn’t need a cell phone? Because I do have a phone at home that works just fine.”

“Yes, ma’am, I do understand,” he said. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

New Yorker cartoon: Guy walks into a cell phone shop and says, “I want one of those phones that makes phone calls.” Can I please have one of those, too?

Prairie Lights, 7:47 p.m.

Carl and I have a leisurely dinner at his house and arrive just in time at Prairie Lights. Sam James is there with a box full of worms in jars, many of them so large that they have to be coiled several times to fit in the jar. He’s also got photographs, posters, and several replicas of worms—a carved wooden worm, some anatomically correct plastic worms, a corduroy worm, and an earthworm necktie that someone made for him. Oh, and some live worms that he dug up just before he came to town, including one native worm from southern Iowa and several European species.

This is not my show. Sam is the star attraction tonight. I wish I could just sit in the audience and listen to him talk, but folks showed up expecting to see an author, so I’ll begin the evening by reading from the book and talking about it a little bit, then I’ll turn the mike over to Sam. Our talk is being broadcast live over a public radio show called “Live from Prairie Lights”—my second hour on the same station in one day. You can listen to it online.

We have a great audience. There was a full-page feature on the book on the front of the local paper’s Life section this weekend, which helped draw out a diverse crowd. There were students, gardeners, naturalists, and—best of all—farmers. Guys who had clearly come in from the fields in enough time to change into a good shirt and drive into town. This is not your usual author event crowd, but Prairie Lights is not your usual bookstore. The farmers took the mike and asked questions about the native and non-native worms in their soil and what their tillage practices might be doing to the soil ecology. Sam and I answered their questions the best we could. We took questions from the audience for half an hour, until the show concluded, and then most everyone there (how many people were there? 50? 60? 70? All the chairs were filled and people stood around the edge and sat on the steps) came up to see the worms, talk to Sam, and get books signed.

Carl asked a question during our talk, and when we got home that night, there was already an e-mail waiting for him from a friend who’d been listening on the radio and recognized his distinctive deep voice. While I knew I’d been talking into a microphone all evening, it had not really hit me that the audience was so much larger than the already sizeable crowd at Prairie Lights. Carl said that the store often gets phone orders for books after the show is broadcast.

This is Sam talking to our audience about worms.

The Road to Iowa

2004-04-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 6 2004 Denver International Airport, 2:07 p.m.

I’m on my way to Iowa City with the worms. It may surprise some of you to know that Iowa City is a kind of Mecca for writers. The Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa is the most prestigious program of its kind in the country, and Prairie Lights Bookstore is certainly the finest independent bookstore in the Midwest. So when the owner of the bookstore called Algonquin and said, “If you’ll get her here, I’ll make sure that every worm person in Iowa shows up,” Algonquin knew what to do. They booked Prairie Lights as one of the first stops on the book tour.

It just so happens that Carl Klaus, founder of the nonfiction program at the University of Iowa, is a friend of mine, so he offered to put me up at his place. He lives in one of those roomy, comfortable old homes that seem to be everywhere in the Midwest—a slightly citified version of a farmhouse, on a sprawling plot of land in a neighborhood where no one has a fence around their property. Carl’s a gardener, too. We met because he wrote a book about his garden called My Vegetable Love. We’d met in person just once before, when I was on a trip through the Midwest to research The Earth Moved. I met Carl in person for the first time on the same day I met Sam James, one of the earthworm scientists I interviewed for the book.

This is going to be a unique book tour moment, because Sam is going to meet me in Iowa City with some of his preserved worm specimens. How often do you get to bring one of the “characters” from your book with you on book tour?

As I board the plane, I find out that I have to gate-check my roll-on bag for the flight from Denver to Iowa City. I did this from Arcata to San Francisco as well. The planes are too small for larger carry-ons, so you leave it by the side of the plane and pick it up as soon as you get off the plane, right there at the gate. Usually I keep the worms in my “small personal item,” a bag that also contains my camera, some food, and a magazine or two. But this time my “small personal item” is the laptop, so the worms had to go in the suitcase.

I worry about the worms in the baggage hold. How cold does it get in there? Is it pressurized? I know that people put their pets in the baggage hold, but I’d worry about that, too. I hope they make it. At least I know that Sam will be there with his worms.

Carl’s house, Iowa City, 11:45 p.m.

It’s been a long day. Three airports, three planes, two connections, but I’m here, and the worms are too, having come through their ordeal in the baggage hold with no problems.
Carl met me at the airport. His wife Kate died quite suddenly and unexpectedly just over a year ago. I knew Kate mostly through Carl’s books, and also through the one afternoon I spent with her and Carl. There’s a lot I could say about Kate, but for the moment I’ll just say that I can’t picture her face without also picturing the lunch she served us that day: the most elegant, artistic, composed salad I’ve ever eaten, complete with curried deviled eggs (oh, I can’t even think of them without my mouth watering—I’m afraid I probably ate 4 or 5 of them), and tomato aspic molded into the shape of Easter eggs. And asparagus and carved radishes and…and…and that was just the salad.

To bed. I have a long day tomorrow.

I Don't Love Earthworms This Much

2004-04-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the person who sent me a link to Margot Knight's website. I really have nothing to add to this. I do hope you will go to her website and look at the rest of her earthworm photos. I would welcome your comments, because I am truly speechless.

Off to Iowa City to read at Prairie Lights and spend some time with my good friend Carl Klaus. I'm excited about this one--earthworm taxonomist Sam James is going to come to the reading with some of the extraordinary worms he's discovered over the years. It will be a truly unique book tour experience. I'll be sure to take some photos and you'll hear from me on Friday. (And yes, I promise to spend the weekend figuring out how to blog from the road.)

The LA Diaries, Part Four

2004-04-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

March 30, 2004 3:10 LAX
I’m a couple hours early for my flight home and oddly, all of the restaurants in this end of the airport are closed. At first I thought, “Wow, do they close on Sunday?” and then I realized that today is Tuesday. I have completely lost track of time. How am I going to have any idea what day it is during the long Bay Area tour? Oh yeah, my cell phone’s readout screen tells me the date. Finally, a good use for that thing.

Had two phone interviews with newspaper reporters this morning from the hotel room. Both of them went well—these interviews all tend to be easy, comfortable conversations with people who are enthusiastic about the subject matter.

I told one of the reporters that I traveled with the worms and she said, “No way. You take them on the plane?”

“Of course,” I said. “They’re just in a little plastic container filled with dirt. They hang out in the hotel room in between appearances.”

“Are they in your hotel room now?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Put them on the phone,” she said.

Wow. No one’s every asked to speak to the worms before. I told her they were saving their voices for the talk this afternoon.

We arrived at Vroman’s around 11. They have a nice set-up upstairs for author events—plenty of space, a microphone if I need it, a table for the worms, and an enormous stack of books. It’s been selling well, they tell me. Do you suppose they say that to all the authors?

Anyway, there was a small but enthusiastic crowd—10 or 15 people in all—but some of them had come to Vroman’s to see my on my last book tour. It’s so nice to have that kind of continuity, that kind of connection with people. I chatted about earthworms and what it was like to track down earthworm scientists and figure out how to tell their stories, and after about a half hour people jumped in with questions. Eventually they all gathered around to see the earthworms and to look at some pictures I’d brought of the giant Australian worm.

Somehow during this process the lovely nightcrawler I’d brought sustained some sort of injury to its tail. I set it back in the dirt so it could at least retreat to a place where it felt safe. The audience members, bookstore staff, and I all crowded around, worried and not quite sure how its tail had come to be almost severed.

It was not until later that I realized how ridiculous it must have seemed for us all to be so concerned about the fate of one earthworm. But that’s what happens when you look at nature up close. Every individual organism starts to matter.