patiently plucking at specks
Today was an ideal day for yardwork: the ground still damp from recent rain, but sunny much of the afternoon, with a few stray drops of rain. The temperature was above 80 F when I went out. The bees and wasps were busy among my two surviving rosebushes, but I still managed to cut away as much of the dead and diseased bits as I could. The neighbor who painted our fence last fall was, ah, casual about how much paint landed off-picket, so I have two buckets with me as I prep the strip by the sidewalk -- one for trash, and one for weeds. That said, I'm trying to leave alone the violets (which remind me of Rae) and the crown vetch (which the BYM likes), in some cases transplanting cuttings (most accidental) and/or arranging them near crepe myrtle poles:
The lettuce seeds from 2016 aren't looking promising, but the radish pot is already crowded, so I thinned out that group, transferring some of the seedlings to another container and nibbling on the rest. One neighbor dropped off thank-you beer for the BYM, keeping his distance while placing it on the porch and chatting with me. Another said hi while his two dogs tugged him up and down the street. I was able to wave to my homebound 80-something neighbor when she reached for her mail. The giant owl nesting high up in a hackberry next door hooted up a storm, so to speak, and a couple of hours later I heard a kid imitating it.
We were under a severe thunderstorm warning and tornado watch when I started typing this. In notes/tweets from other locals, the weariness and jitters are palpable. Looking at the wider world, I'm fretting about friends in the so-called hotspots, especially NYC.
I returned to work (remotely) on Monday. Like gardening, there is so dang much to do no matter what is or isn't on the calendar, and so many things outside of my control, budget, etc. Me and my tools will keep scraping at and tugging things into some semblance of order.
Sometimes I am the dumbest kitten in the basket. Yesterday I opened a package of seaweed, realized from the smell that it had gone rancid, and then dumped it into the soup pot anyway. The soup subsequently had to be dumped down the drain. One of these years my understanding of sunk cost fallacy will override peasant autopilot, but it sure didn't kick in last night. I also clean forgot about the five-spice pork in the microwave between putting it in last night and wondering why the machine was flashing its ENJOY YOUR MEAL message this morning. It's okay. There's a lot to tend to, and every experienced cook has tales of failure. I was reading the October 2018 issue of Southern Living earlier today, which has Damaris Phillips's memories of Blackberry Jam Cake: "I made the mistake of using the wrong kind of jam once, and it produced a dense brick of a cake that even our backyard opossum, Sir Phillip, refused to eat."
This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/162270.html.
The lettuce seeds from 2016 aren't looking promising, but the radish pot is already crowded, so I thinned out that group, transferring some of the seedlings to another container and nibbling on the rest. One neighbor dropped off thank-you beer for the BYM, keeping his distance while placing it on the porch and chatting with me. Another said hi while his two dogs tugged him up and down the street. I was able to wave to my homebound 80-something neighbor when she reached for her mail. The giant owl nesting high up in a hackberry next door hooted up a storm, so to speak, and a couple of hours later I heard a kid imitating it.
We were under a severe thunderstorm warning and tornado watch when I started typing this. In notes/tweets from other locals, the weariness and jitters are palpable. Looking at the wider world, I'm fretting about friends in the so-called hotspots, especially NYC.
I returned to work (remotely) on Monday. Like gardening, there is so dang much to do no matter what is or isn't on the calendar, and so many things outside of my control, budget, etc. Me and my tools will keep scraping at and tugging things into some semblance of order.
Sometimes I am the dumbest kitten in the basket. Yesterday I opened a package of seaweed, realized from the smell that it had gone rancid, and then dumped it into the soup pot anyway. The soup subsequently had to be dumped down the drain. One of these years my understanding of sunk cost fallacy will override peasant autopilot, but it sure didn't kick in last night. I also clean forgot about the five-spice pork in the microwave between putting it in last night and wondering why the machine was flashing its ENJOY YOUR MEAL message this morning. It's okay. There's a lot to tend to, and every experienced cook has tales of failure. I was reading the October 2018 issue of Southern Living earlier today, which has Damaris Phillips's memories of Blackberry Jam Cake: "I made the mistake of using the wrong kind of jam once, and it produced a dense brick of a cake that even our backyard opossum, Sir Phillip, refused to eat."
This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/162270.html.