Mar 15-30

the doctor is IN

2005 Mar 31

dating tip of the day, don't bother flirting with anyone as plant obsessed as I am if you can't even correctly identify a tulip.

i sure felt like a doctor today. line starts to the left of the counter folks...it was a miracle i could get anything done with everybody wanting me to take a look at some disembodied part of a plant and diagnose its maladies.

how do you nicely tell someone that they're overwatering their plants???

it's actually a nice break from the routines of what would otherwise be a pretty slow thursday.

the birds are all nice and nesty now. mama dove has got some little ones in the nest by the front door. hope we don't turn her into a nervous wreck with all of our curiosity. some people think the birds are cute. others think we should kill them. the latter are no doubt closely related to satan...very closely related me thinks.

i like watching all the honeybees come over and pollinate the flowers. i always wonder where they come from though...i know they'll fly a fairly long way if they think they've found a good source. i can't wait until we have butterflies too.

it's funny having seagulls around. we're so far from the ocean, and it's a little surreal to hear them while i'm at work. makes me feel like i should be at the beach soaking up the sun. although around here, the beach is somewhere you go to get colder, the pacific ocean is so weird sometimes, i swear.

i ran into my neighbor on the bus. i guess it was bound to happen since we are apparently working near each other on similar schedules. kinda weird, but maybe it will help with craziness that's been going on upstairs. i'll admit things have gotten a little bit better in that department, but i've gotten my hopes up one too many times. it's odd but she reminds me of renae in some indescribeable way.

who pissed in your cornflakes today?

2005 Mar 26

man, i don't know what happened but everyone is crank deluxe today. not that i was exactly immune either, but oh well.

after we were all done griping about the test, diane walks in and says, "how was it". and well all go, "grrr mumble gripe grr grr arg." then not 5 minutes later in comes kris and she says, "hey guys, how was it?" grrrr. i'm just hoping i wasn't overly lured in by the trick questions.

i know i just LOVE IT when people share their racist opinions with me. LOVE IT. actually it just makes me grouchy for hours. maybe i'm just totally on crack, living in some kind of dream world, and should get with it, and start hating everyone who's different than me...but nah. i think ultimately that people just don't get out enough. kinda hard to hate people if you are friends with them. live a little. try new things. it's not as bad as it sounds...sigh.

i actually got off early because the weather was so lousy that nobody came in this morning. once i moved the rhodys, I was gone. sure didn't stop people from going anywhere else though. boy was it hype outside. buying gas took forever because there were so many people at the gas station.

once i got home, it was all about lounging around. an unexpected day off made me feel like relaxing. sure i went to the co-op but that was about it. didn't feel like doing nothing else. just sat around and listened to the neighbor's pager go off all afternoon. seems like whenever the girl leaves the pager starts going off. just an observation...

maybe tomorrow will be better...

today's detritus

2005 Mar 25

i love 2 am, it's my new favorite time of the day. whatever dream i was in the middle of gets cut off like somebody threw a switch...instead i can listen to my neighbors stomping around upstairs. it's soooo much fun. and being really tired at work is fun too. i love 2 am. it's the best.

beauty is in the eye the beholder. sometimes the right beholder needs to come along. there's something for everyone out there, you just gotta look for love in the most unlikely places (lily).

i've thought lassen county california is a really neat place for the longest time...so i ring up this guy who propagates native plants for nps at lassen. what a cool job to have.

there are entirely too many varieties of rhododendron out there. i think i can say with confidence that we have quite enough of them, and if your life goal is to come up with another one, you can quit right now. trust me, there's plenty...and i have to memorize them all by saturday.

why isn't my lettuce germinating? it's the weirdest thing to have basil and not lettuce.

is it just me or shouldn't 4 year olds probably be in bed by 10 o'clock? i think it's just me here.

i met a homeless guy today who knows more about bikes than most bike shop employees. fortunately i really think he's alot happier just riding his bike around, so your slightly above minimum wage job is secure folks.

some people are really into one stop shopping, but i guess i'm not one of them. i like to buy my bike, my bread, and my fertilizer in completely different places, thank you.

in 3 days, an completely empty building turned into a fully function drive thru subway shop. that's just eerie.

i just watched the best movie ever. it's called samurai champloo. it's like cowboy bepop but about ronin. shiznizzle, that's some good times. if something like this could be combined with godspeed i'd retire right now and ride my bike around until the wheels fell off.

i like people who want to buy real currants (ribes) and real mulberries (morus). forget this flowery halfass strictly ornamental crap. if you have to buy plants, why not plants with actual fruit? it's like a free bonus every year. of course some people don't have the faintest idea what to do with mulberries. i'd say most people don't actually. jam is the obvious answer, but for those of you with less free time on your hands, there's a simpler answer. pancakes. mulberry pancakes are arguably even better than blueberry pancakes. and mulberries are always cheaper than blueberries for most of us.

"i love you, you're beautiful. truly these are the last days."

garden fever

2005 Mar 22

finally had a chance to act on those gardening urges I've been having.

I got a bunch of huge 15 gallon tree pots, so I'm starting to get those ready to plant in. I've got peas in one, and garlic in another with some primroses I rescued out of the dumpster. later though they'll all be used for things like basil, tomatoes and herbs, and greens. As big as they are, I should have a lot better luck with growing stuff in this crazy hot climate than I did last year.

I'm pretty excited about getting some gardening underway...It would be so nice to have some homegrown produce again.

bye bye winter blahs.

adventures in sleep deprivation

2005 Mar 21

Haven't been getting much sleep lately and last night was the final straw. the loud neighbors (who gave us a break for about a week) are back to their old tricks. for about three nights, i've been averaging less than 4 hours of sleep which for me is dangerous. last night they didn't sleep...so neither did we. i think we mighta gotten in 3 hours between the two of us. we also both had to come home from work early because we were too damn tired to do our jobs. that's just pathetic.

so i called the landlord and he said if i would testify, he would evict. hey, at this point, i am willing to do just about anything to get a good night's sleep.

what concerns me of course is that now i have an angry meth dealer on my hands. and a minimum of two people upstairs who have police records. needless to say, i don't feel very safe at all under the circumstances and i might have to move my car for a few days in case anyone wants to explore my high deductible...

so on that note, things have gotten a little more exciting. i hate drama and now i'm right up in it. i hope this is it for awhile. good thing i have to work all the time...at least there it's nice and quiet.

an added note of unreality based television

2005 Mar 20

"O brother with the common tongue" the random babble generator says...so using this nonsense that showed up in my inbox against itself, here goes--some random thoughts of the past 24 hours.

"dont let her turn to veggies" i don't know why everyone is so excited by Grocery Outlet. so--you can buy a case of your colored-sugar-water for a dollar less--big deal. on a similar note, i wish all the people who are standing in line at the Co-op with a cart full of lettuce and carrots and apples would take to the streets, seize a couple of bags of seeds and a bareroot tree and dig up their lawn today. who knows what might happen?

"you can stand next to me as long as you don't talk about the temperature" the warmer weather we've had musta gotten everybody on the bus feeling more conversational than usual. i had to break down and get a walkman. there's too many crazy people on the bus some days. it's not easy being the only sane person on the bus.

"To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others" i wonder how my brother, his girl and baby luke are all doing. i wish i wasn't so far away right now. i need to get marching to the post office and mail them this cd though.

"My drink is getting lonely. Would you like to join me with yours" someone's been really good about making coffee at work lately. i wonder who it is...it sure helps me though. i'm not too functional at 8:30 in the morning. On other drink related notes, I had my first strawberry lemonade of the year and it was soooo good. like a desert in a glass. and with real strawberries. that's a rare thing in this day and age of artificial flavors and colors.

"hey there, ya look grim as hell's car" went to see constantine with brian last night. so like michael says "I went out on a weekend and did something." pretty rare in my experience these days. there's not much you feel up to doing after a day of hauling around trees and hustling 3 cubic feet bales of mulch out into people's trunks. but we made it out of the house. all that chain smoking reminds me of the people who stand out in the parking lot of fred meyer's every day and smoke all afternoon. drives me nuts because it all usually drifts my way...i swear though, if they get up enough nerve to stand by the fence, i'm gonna spray them with the hose for sure.

"I have spoke with one gender of herbs or distract it with my paperwork." the next person that asks me if we have a tomato...or basil...or some other seasonally inappropriate item is gonna get referred to the seed rack. i wish everyone would take the time to grow their herbs from seed. they'd appreciate them more perhaps. and you can afford to buy as many as you could ever want.

"Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be." that sounds very deepak chopra to me. as for "normal", i don't think i'd know "normal" if it hit me in the head with a dustpan/broom combo. i'm just not normal. but it gets me far these days. weird is good. i will continue to wear funny pants and stick flowers in my hair. life's too short to be anything less than eccentric.

and speaking of weird, i think that "januaryhotstickbootleg" would be a good name for something. i just don't know what.

rant #46 "I am sold not yet" i won't wear your barcodes. my sku number is not found in your system. your logos does not grace any part of who i am. no i don't want a damn preferred shopper card. the music is soothing, but the message sucks. (now you see why i don't go to stores very often)

missing links

2005 Mar 20

weird energy today. very weird. lots of strange things happened around me today. i won't go into details, but suffice it to say i was pretty shaken by the chain of events that went down this afternoon.

i'm officially on the warpath with the argentine ant infestation. so far they seem to be going for the bait. hopefully they will plague my poor apartment no more after this. i'm tired of trying to keep all my food sitting on top of the stove, the one place they haven't "found" yet.

it sorta rained today for the first time in a really really long time, but not enough to amount to anything. it smelled like rain though, and i guess that counts for something in this world.

today i'm listening to the blues. i guess the gray clouds put me in the mood for something a little more down to earth than what i've been listening to (Najma).

someone pulled up in a pickup and gave me about a dozen 15 gallon tree pots they were fixin' to throw away. that's kinda like giving me about 12 dollars, because those things are worth money--more than bottle deposits for sure. i kept half just because i need them badly enough, but turned the other half in for the cash redemption. it won't go real far mind you but i could be a big ol' bag of potting soil, a gallon pot of lavendar, or starts of strawberries, all things a girl could conceivably need. maybe i'll get lucky and it'll happen often enough to keep me from having to pay for more plants...yeah right.

everybody's missing something, it seems. sometimes that's something "crucial" as sonya would say. i wonder where she is, and if she's okay. i wonder if we are all just looking for the things we've lost deep down inside--do they slip away, or do we accidentally leave them on the bus, or deliberately throw them in the fire to burn away to ashes? it's a question that seems very relevant today. as the song goes, "life's a bitch i swear to god you take your chances, too many questions, not enough answers" you never know what you really need but may not have.

i guess the other thing i wonder about is the seeds i'm sowing in the wind. selling trees that live for a hundred years (or more) makes you think about the meaning of life in ways that the peddlers of more perishable goods cannot imagine. every day, I send people out the front door with something that goes on to become something much greater than what they initially walk out the door with. i feel more like an adoption agent sometimes. do they know what they are doing? will they kill it, or will this tree outlive them and all of their generations? i wonder what kinds of things will happen after i put that sold tag on the tree...

Butterbean

butterbean

2005 Mar 13

we've got a butterbean! yay!

Introducing Luke B---------, son of Bryan and Jenny. He was born March 13at 8:45pm EST. As well as being a fellow Pisces, Luke is a Red Monkey, born in the year of Green Chicken.

Watch out world, his ruling element is fire.

Mar 1-15

friend with weed(s)

2005 Mar 17

started off on a more march like note today...it was cold and gray and looked like it would rain.

typical for the rogue valley, it never did get around to raining though. the sun came out before noon even rolled around.

pretty quiet at work, although i still sold a few trees in keeping with my reputation. it was funny, at the sales meeting, someone from ashland said, I notice you guys have been selling more trees lately. maybe it's a coincidence after all, but i'd like to take some credit for it. i'm pretty good at sending people home with trees. all i can hope though, is that they aren't killing them.

someone made my day though, but coming in with obvious care and research put into their decisions. and the good sense enough to accept what nature dictates. i love these types, the ones who obviously know what they're doing, but yet aren't horticulture snobs at the same time.

when i got home i was good and tired. but i stumbled out back to pick some miner's lettuce. it's my new favorite wild edible, a lot easier to use in some ways than chickweed, but a completely different creature. i had never seen it before, but now that i'm sure it's safe to eat, i've been eating lots of it, since we have so much growing over by the recycling area.

while i was over there though, i got to talking to the neighbor across the street. praising her artichokes and asparagus got me set up with a bag full of turnips, beets and some arugula. she's my new best friend, lemme tell ya. i'll now have someone who can adopt dumpster plants, since i usually don't have anywhere to put them.

the hustla

2005 Mar 13

they call me the tree hustler, cos you come in and so much as look at a tree, and you'll probably be taking it home...

the last couple of days there's been some real commodians on the bus. must mean it's time to get a new walkman again...

the plums around here are all scattering their petals like rain. they've bloomed out and will be all leafy in no time. seems like they come and go in about a week so i'm glad i got a couple of pictures, but wish i had more time to go around with my camera. this is the downside of working.

i saw the cutest thing at work...there was this 4 year old girl, and someone brought in a golden retriever puppy--and they just bonded. they looked so cute i just had to take a picture of it. it took a good 30 minutes for the pile of mush feeling to dissipate. i was probably rocking the googliest grin ever-it was that cute.

things have gotten better with the neighbors upstairs. sometimes i hear them but the worst offenses seem to be gone. talking to the landlord a couple of times musta made things simmer down. i'm glad i don't have to do anything real drastic like sleep in my car to get a good night's sleep...

i had two people ask me about water plants today...which rocked. it gave me a chance to show off my knowledge in that department. it's a nice break from "how long do pansies bloom?"

my grandfather knew all kinds of amazing things, some of which he told me, and some which I also remember...and one of them came back to haunt me today.

and on an entirely different note: boy do I love this new insecticidal soap we sell. It's called Rose Pharm and boy oh boy oh boy do I love it. not only does it smell great, but it's organic and it really works, and by golly it's totally worth the $12.95 they charge. i just get downright giddy thinking about it. I don't have any roses mind you, but my poor houseplants that get all infested with nasty pestilences respond really well to this stuff.

okay, i'll calm down now.

wonder how everybody's doing...haven't heard from anyone in awhile, so i guess people are busy or just not up to anything real exciting--but if you are, I'd love to hear about it. even if you aren't, for that matter.

ume-yu

2005 Mar 08

Around here it's not raining like we all would wish, but there is a steady rain of plum blossoms. The daffodils and all the other spring bulbs are flowering, and the air smells like the plum blossoms that are covering the sidewalks. It's the peak of the flowering plums...in a couple days all those flowers will be gone and the trees will be the softest spring green. When you walk down the street, the pears and plums contribute their pink and white splashes in with the wild yellow of the forsythia. I've even seen violets in the backyard, and other trees are setting their buds.

The air smells really good in a way that's too subtle for most people to notice.

Don't feel too good right at the present, but I took a stroll down to the library and picked up bela fleck and charlie musselwhite. i was the only person in a jacket. everywhere else, bare flesh and sandals have taken over the collective populace. i'm not quite ready to trust the fickle ways of spring. mom says back east they had the same weather--but then the next day it snowed. never trust spring.

went to the farmer's market for the first time in months. didn't see rachel over at the fry booth, so i wonder if she's on seasonal layoff or doing something else...i didn't leave empty handed though. got some fig preserves and rhubarb. i'm a sucker for flavors you can't get at the grocery store. call me old fashioned i guess.

didn't go to class, though i would have liked to. just didn't feel up for the commute and sitting in a desk. i'm too achy at the moment. week doesn't feel quite right though.

Was quieter last night upstairs. That's a major improvement. Makes me wonder if there's any hope the problems been taken care of.

had another dream about decleyre. i miss those guys. sometimes i feel like i left a family behind, and i miss that family. wonder if my life will ever be like that again?

roundup

2005 Mar 06

whew, the past 4 days are a bit of a blur...

what have i been up to? not much really. just working. the weekdays are usually pretty chill, but the weekends have been hype. we had a ton of people come in on saturday and sunday. i had to soak my feet on saturday night, and frankly may do it again today.

feeling a bit sleep deprived at the moment because our "charming" neigbhors didn't sleep at all last night. and when they don't sleep NEITHER DO WE. i also have a mysterious earache. nice.

it's been so nice lately. the past couple of days were supposed to be rainy but it really didn't rain during the day. today was real nice and sunny and warm. it's so weird.

i heard last week that it might get up to 80 this week. now it seems quite possible.

last night was awful. these people are really really getting on my nerves. it's like it doesn't even occur to them that other people live around them, so they just go around making all kinds of noise day and night. i'm so over it. (okay bitchfest over)

somebody came in the other day wanting roundup. it's a day i knew would come but it still blows my mind that people would rather spray some nasty chemicals than take the time to pull up a few weeds. the one consolation is that for every one of those types, i have 2 or 3 people that interrogate me about whether or not something in the "chemical/fertilizer" section is organic or not. miracle grow shmiracle grow. hah! believe it or not, it doesn't work on everything (as the commercials would have you believe).

Top 3 questions I've had this week:

1. Q: can i plant this camelia/rhododendron in the sun? A: sure, if you want to kill it.

2. Q: why does my lawn look like crap? I've been watering it. A: the short answer is that it needs some food as well! Nitrogen baby...or iron in some cases. But seriously though, grass in this climate is just crazy...it's too dry and hot here. It doesn't rain for months and months...If you have to have the stuff, try something more suited to the climate to begin with.

3. Q: does this (forsythia/ornamental pear/etc) bloom year round? A: nope. That's why it's special. Who would get excited about flowering trees if they looked that way all the time? (Or the blaze of fall reds and oranges, for that matter)? But more importantly those flowers often serve an important biological purpose--to attract bees/pollinators so that tree can make fruits. So nature in it's wisdom makes these displays brief, perhaps so that we can appreciate them all the more for their uniqueness.

well before I get all philosophical, i should probably go check on the laundry.

i think peace and quiet time is over. It was quiet for about an hour and a half, but someone just pulled up and went upstairs. so much for relaxation.

birthday buddies? nope.

2005 Mar 01

lucky me, it's actually gonna be nice today.

i was hoping i'd have a birthday buddy sometime today, but it didn't happen after all.

went to the library but i forgot it doesn't open 'til noon, so i wasted my time on that errand. tried kickin' it next door at evo's but that still left me with more than an hour and a half on my hands, so i thought maybe i could swing on over to goodwill and find myself a birthday present. they didn't have any sunset publications (a currently useful commodity) but i got a couple of japanese bowls. still had too much time on my hands so i gave up and went back home.

sure enough it looks like march outside. the daffodills are blooming all over town. plum trees are flowering, and i've even seen a few pears. The forsythia is blooming and it's starting to look a lot more cheery out there in late winter land.

by the time i wanted to go to class it started getting rainy. i got a mean case of motion sickness from reading on the bus, that didn't fade away for about 20 minutes. The rain was still coming down when I came out of the building, so I had to stand under the bus shelter. unfortunately i was surrounded by smokers so my lungs seized up and i had to go off in the cold to find a place i could breathe in.

ended up fixing some guy's cassette tape while i was waiting for the bus driver to show up and get her rollin', then buried my nose in native trees of the northwest. there's some really neat stuff in the conifer section, rare trees that like harsh unforgiving environments...trees that no doubt are likely to disappear with the bush administration's wholesale logging of the national forests around here. makes me grouchy just thinking about it. i'm a softy for trees, they're really neat, especially the ancient ones like redwoods, sequoias and bristlecone pines.