May-a recap

Memorial Day

2005 May 30

Memorial day

Man were we ever busy at work today...whew! yep, I said work. who's surprised? not me. since i was stuck working today, brian went in and worked too, so at least i had some solidarity...along with every gas station, restaurant, and grocery store employee in the good ol' usa. it was bad in the sense that we were the only business of our kind open so had a lot of people come in that usually probably don't, and i had tons and tons of people asking me questions all day, but nothing particularly adverse happened and i didn't have to deal with any of our "regular personality disorders" (they all came in yesterday).

we have a couple of younguns working for us now so i get my requisite time around teenage boys once in awhile. they're just as i remembered them too... the weather was nice until it got hot in the afternoon. i spent a good bit of time pruning back unruly roses and deadheading them so now i have a bag of rosepetals to use for nefarious plots of my own. i watched the baby finches (cute little fuzzballs) in the greenhouse, hiding out behind a display while they're trying to figure out the whole flight thing. people brought in amazing food for the potluck, and my veggie sushi went over better than expected.

after work, brian pulled up and we went over to see star wars again. what a great movie. the kashykk footage totally reminds me of guilin. makes me want to go back...i wonder how much it's changed.

ゆうべは雷がなって稲光がした。

There was lots of thunder last night.

2005 May 27

For the first time in a very long time, we had some good ol' fashioned thunderstorms like the kind I remember from living back east.

During the heat of the day, I watched the huge thunderheads build up to the southwest, amassing and piling up over ridges. by dinnertime the sky began to take on the yellowish tinge that you get with a good storm, and shortly thereafter it rained and hailed a good bit. Kinda wish I had a cistern, because I sure could've collected a ton of water offa this storm.

all night long it rained and stormed. the power went out several times and the lightning was incredible.

I sure miss this sort of thing. here I can count the number of times we have a good thunderstorm on one hand in a year's time. sigh.

i'm feelin' hot hot hot!

2005 May 26

sheesh, move to oregon turn into a sissy!

i used to think 90 degree weather was nuthin' but man oh man i've gotten soft. we jumped from 60s to mid 90s and i'm burnin' up bad. worked outside all day and am not feelin' so hot.

how did i used to do this???

i turned into a norteno sissy. god i feel pathetic.

last year i used to work outside in weather like this, although now i realized what made it work...i was working a lot earlier in the day before the heat got so bad.

well enough bitching about the heat. i'll go back to drinking my water.

banjo bill and a friendly llama

2005 May 24

cold this morning, but it warmed up fast. halfway to the farmer's market i had to start peeling off the jacket and long sleeve shirt. fortunately this time i wasn't riding against the wind the whole way, so the trip was a lot more pleasant than the week before.

the minute i walked in, i spotted an old friend...banjo bill. haven't seen him since last fall, but there he was hamming it up for the kids. filled him in with the latest, and went on a search for some basil to replace the stuff i have that didn't make it through the cold wet weather we've had.

feeling strangely sociable, i talked to an awful lot of people about this and that. dispensed advice on growing tomatoes to hippy mamas and wandered over to abbey lane to get a pepino ducle plant for dayton. ended up with another tomato (like i need any more right?) and got to talking about weird fruits like pawpaws and jujubes. then i went back to check out banjo bill's new dog...

it's about the third time this week that someone has told me they've gotten a puppy that someone found in a box on the side of a road. a guy at work has a puppy that was dumped when it was only 3 days old...banjo bill's was part of a litter of 5...3 were run over on the highway before anyone could round them up and get them out of the roadway. the lady we were talking to of course asks the proverbial question, "what kind of people do these things?"

A: cold heartless bastards. sigh. i don't honestly know or understand what the hell is wrong with people. a 3 day old puppy can't fend for itself at all. a box on the side of the interstate??? why not just shoot them in the backyard? it seems so much kinder...but yeah, people who treat animals like this should really be backed over a few times by logging trucks. fo' real. thankfully sometimes these tragic tales have happier endings. word.

right as i'm leaving this guy walks in with a llama! shit, I love llamas! here's some cool stuff i dug up off the internet..."Llamas are very peaceful creatures and can add so much tranquility to your life...they are exceptionally intelligent and curious for one thing... Llamas are frequently used as therapy animals. WARNING: Llamas are addictive! Several people I know fell in love with these magical creatures, bought a farm and live a very unique lifestyle now. If you melt a little with your first whiffle (llama kisses which are a gentle blowing in your face), it's probably too late to run, you're hooked. For others it's the gentle hum of a llama hello, or those long, silky eyelashes framing big, intelligent eyes.

Still others are impressed with the llama intelligence (they are smarter than dogs) or their aloof cat-like nature. Llamas have been recommended by psychologists and MD's as stress reducers for people with active lives. There is a something special about llamas, if you sit and just 'be' with a llama, you can't help getting caught in the magic." Anyhow, until i moved out west the only place i'd ever seen one was in the pages of national geographic or some shit like that. even here you generally only see them on the side of the road grazing on the other side of fences going down the interstate, unlike cows which are everywhere. so i was face to face with a real life llama. sure enough i got to pet him. he was checking me out the way horses often do kinda sniffing around...so i scratched his ears and let him sniff away. what a cute friendly little fella. he musta been into me because when i left he was pulling on the leash and trying to follow me home. aww. sorry friend, i don't think you would like one bedroom apartment and surly cat. but i'll definitely have to keep them in mind for my master plan farm.

after all that, i kept the slack train rollin' by hanging out at the park for awhile, had myself a nice little picnic, and went home and planted up some of the tomatoes. i was a bit late for class because i missed the bus, but i made it in time to catch most of it. the ride home was funny because there were only 3 of us on the bus (unheard of). guess all the regulars were up to something else today.

the moon's full so i'm doing some planting of seeds, i hope they work out better this time. i'm starting to get peas and strawberries finally. is there anything on earth that tastes as good as homegrown strawberries? i don't know...except maybe that peach i had yesterday. yummmmmmmmmmmm. i guess the timing is pretty good because generally the harvest dates are a month behind memphis, and theoretically i'd be waiting until june 1st or so. all the herbs i harvested at work are finally dry enough to start putting in jars so i will have more room around the house now. all those trays take up tons of space. i'll have rig up something outdoors.

i still have a healthy slug population to contend with, but i found a good use for them...fish seem to like slugs! so if you too are plagued with a never ending supply of slugs eatin' up all yo' greens and strawberries and pepper plants, just put 'em in a can and use 'em for fishbait. and leave your earthworms to do magical things for your soil.

got my first co-op dividend today, sweet! membership pays off.

pay to play

2005 May 20

a nice bonus on friday was that we finally were able to talk chris into letting us weed the median strip and plant some new stuff out there. so michael and i were out there going at it--so at least once this year i have an excuse to do some "hoeing". ;) we planted a bunch of monarda, salvia, philomis, and some other perennials. now if only we could do something about the wine barrels...

had a pretty good day overall. it wasn't too busy but wasn't like yesterday when i was feeling pretty unnecessary overall. all i can really say for thursday is at least a bunch of people brought their dogs in so i had some amusement. a slow day can be very dull indeed.

got a wicked case of fruit flies from somewhere or another, to add to the mystery of gnats. i know the gnats hitchhiked home on a plant from work, but i don't know where the fruitflies came from. fortunately i learned a useful trick from aunty carolyn a long time ago that's good at times like these: vinegar traps. vinegar+a little dishsoap+a container=lots of dead fruitflies. they can't resist the vinegar (braggs seems to work really well), but drown in the dishsoap (as it changes the surface tension). die die die.

wow, here it is almost the end of may. crazy! past couple of year's I'd be winding up seasonal gigs at the botanical gardens, and doing who knows what after that...kinda nice to have a little stability after years of the opposite. i've been here almost a year, now, and it took almost that long to get things to work out...and now i have to go to portland. hopefully that will end up being a lot easier! well we can only hope. but at least i know that things, no matter what, usually work out just fine, and therefore there's no use in worrying about them at all.

きっと あなた は 私が 結婚した こと を 聞いて
驚いた こと でしょう。

2005 May 18

i know she's surprised i'm getting married. most of the time, so am i. in my case, it seems like one of those things you only see on tv. i'm pretty okay with it though. i like the idea of having a partner for life. the whole issue never made sense before i met brian. now it's just as obvious as gravity. consequently it's not something i think about a whole lot anymore. i just kind of accept it.

it just makes sense.

and that's kind of comforting in a weird way.

maybe sometime when i'm feeling more lucid i'll write an essay on the topic. but not tonight.

tomorrow's a whole new day.

on a completely different note, would you believe i found a fenugreek plant at the farmer's market today? if you think i took it home, you answered correctly. gosh i just can't say no, can i? thank god there isn't a group that rescues plants...I'd be like a cat lady...only with plants. i'm bad enough as it is. but you know, I feel a great sense of satisfaction when i walk by the jungle kingdom right outside my door...i can watch a lady bug eat aphids off my pea vines, marvel at how much the pineapple sage has grown, watch the culinary sage flowering on its second year, watch the carrots form seedheads, find worms under my pots, pick a strawberry, see the new growth on the plants i repotted, marvel at how many slugs there are, and figure out where I can squeeze in just one more plant...sigh.

my yard, when i get around to having one, will rival most botanical gardens, I assure you.

i found out they tore down the old abandoned hospital finally. someone stole the plants from the orange mound community garden. i wonder what other sad things have happened back in memphis? so many things have changed this year...as they always do, i guess.

a tentative welcome to spring

2005 May 01

The vernal equinox is too early to feel much like spring unless you live in the deep south, so i tend to think of May 1st as being the "real" first day of spring. True to form it has been raining, and the hawthorns are blooming with their unique crinkly rose shaped flowers. Going down the road, i've noticed that all the trees have leafed out in their spring greens that exude such vitality. the first green lush leaves of spring always take my breath away. trees are such an incredible color in april and early may. In some ways even the showiest of spring flowers pale beside that intense green. I'd like to think every else is out there digging around in the dirt, dancing around a maypole, or out in the woods looking for mayapples and trillium.

Here on the threshold of some major life changes, I find myself thinking more and more about "where I'm bound". Spring is a time of renewal. But for me, it is also a time for changes. Like the caravans of travelling kids who drift into town as the days grow longer, I too get itchy feet. In a way, I know where I'm going...but like all wanderers, I have to live with a certain amount of faith in what I will find at the end of the road. "We are each unique beings with a unique path in life. If we wish to be fulfilled, we need to go to our own hearts for direction." I feel like the elm tree across the street from the bus stop. when the winds blow in a favorable direction, i'll cast my seeds out there and hope they land in good soil and find favorable outcomes.

duck egg custards

2005 May 01

been pretty achy and tired the last couple of days. no need to get alarmed, this is actually pretty normal.

i discovered to my horror that bret's hired chainsaw mistook my catalpa tree for something he needed to cut down, so now i have a stump in my back yard where a tree should rightfully go. sniff sniff. poor catalpa. you'd think he would have noticed the subtle differences between the two species but i guess they were just *too* subtle. thankfully there's another right on the other side of the fence, so all is lost.

busted out the cowboy hat again for the first time this season. as usual, people either dug it, or they laughed at it. as for me i don't care about the naysayers...we'll just SEE who's laughing come summertime, when i'm the one NOT sporting the "redneck" or other facial sunburns. hah! that hat's gotten me through a lot of blazing summer days in the rogue valley.

toni brought in duck egg custards with a little begonia garnish (i had no idea whey were edible, but they have a lemony taste) and came with rhubarb sauce. yum. it's funny because i don't eat eggs hardly ever, but lately i've been in the mood. i've noticed, when you bring up duck eggs you get some interesting reactions outta people. most americans i have met, are quite perturbed by the idea of eating non-chicken eggs. oddly enough the whole rest of the world doesn't seem to restrict themselves to white factory farm chicken eggs, the japanese seem to get into quail eggs (i'd love to know how they go about THAT) and the chinese swear by duck eggs. duck eggs make perfectly good sense to me. they're a bit higher in cholesterol so don't go crazy with them, but they're bigger for one, and ducks are a lot easier to care for than chickens.

yesterday it was thundering up by the ridge to the southeast. we hardly ever get any thunderstorms here so it was kinda exciting. never did get around to raining, although people from other locales say they got hail and rain. pretty typical though for us to have completely different weather on one side of the freeway, than on the other.

I've got a new hobby at the moment, something i can do at work when it's a bit slow--whittling chopsticks out of tree branches. i had pruned a lot of things ealier and missed the boat, but with all these young trees, there's still pleny of broken branches that need to be pruned off. and lo and behold they're good for making chopsticks with. considering that all the chopsticks i have are made with bamboo or pine (boooooring) i kinda relish the idea of cherrywood, pearwood, applewood, almondwood, etc.

the other day on my lunch break i walked over to the grower's market, and lo and behold someone was selling salvia apiana (white sage). we had some at decleyre but it never looked terribly happy as the climate was all wrong (waaaay too humid). i love the way it smells so i've been wanting some, and i'm basically on a sage kick anyway (other than eating tons of it, i used to use our prolific purple sage as a mosquito repellent). apparently like many a good plant (lavender), it doesn't need much water, and the secret to not killing it, is to NOT water it. i'm looking forward to seeing if it gets happy this summer. can't wait to see all the other sage flowering around here.