bog rebuilding (again), complaints, and a torrential downpour
I started a tear-down and rebuild of the bog today, and retired due to wussiness in the face of 90-degree temperatures (and got a sunburn. I know what sunscreen is, just not always where to find it, after a long and snowy winter). The bog’s still in a state of semi-finishedness-itude, as a result. Despite aforementioned wussiness, it was a wonderfully productive couple of hours, but still not enough for me to be able to get up in the morning, look outside, and avoid wincing at the work yet to come. The work, I might add, that will haunt me every time I look in the bog’s direction, and will get in the way of enjoying meals and conversations.
Stonework, even dry stonework, is time-consuming on its best days. It has the attraction, however, of being like a jigsaw puzzle with better payoff in the end (payoff in the form of a celebratory beer imbibed while gazing upon the majesty of the new construction). It’s somewhat remarkable how a pile of rocks can either end up looking like a wall or like… a slightly different pile of rocks than the original, depending how much I’ve managed to be all Zen about it. (The less Zen, the more likely it will merely resemble a pile of rubble that somehow moved from its previous location. The more Zen, the more it manages to be about transforming the properties of these rocks so that they only want to be a wall.)
The whole production did manage to royally piss off the ants who inhabit a vast network of nests within the original (really not-Zen) stone walls, and they made sure to let me know of their displeasure. Either that, or they’re upset about the whole worm farm/boiling water incident last week. Who knows. SO, I’ve got ant bites again! It’s like being at summer camp, or something. Unreal. That’s what throwing off the shackles of an office job will do for you: put yourself in the arms of Nature, where you will get sampled by various angry bits of wildlife.
OK: as the title alluded, there’s a complaint or two to be voiced, and here they are:
1. How the hell does a woman in her 40s get ZITS? I’m not going to elaborate on it. It’s just pathetic.
2. It was hot long enough for me to get used to it, and now it’s about to be bloody freezing (ok, 50 degrees), and I put all the sweaters in the attic already. (Yes, I did. 90 degrees, remember? Who even wants to LOOK at wool, when it’s in the nineties in April?) I can expect a lot of funny looks, as I go about town in a protective shroud of windbreakers and afghans. (No, crap, the afghans are in the attic, too…I forgot.)
Was it supposed to rain tonight? Damn!
It’s 11PM now and probably raining harder than rain has ever rained. The poor seedlings in the raised beds are hopefully still in the state, and not washed out to sea, at this point.
I’m glad I went and put a second lid on the worm farm: the original lid was slightly under-hung, and water could collect under it, and find its way down into the bins themselves. I *think* the new lid will put a stop to that.
(hope, hope)
(hope)
Recycled vegetables & rainy days
Some of the kale from last year’s garden survived in the compost heap! I rescued it, and replanted it: we’ll see what it decides to do. For the time being, it’s keeping the lone collard company.
kale resurrected!
We’ve now got seeds planted in two of the beds, too. To say that we’re going to have a mountain of kale this year is an understatement: we’re going to have so much kale, it’ll be completely insane.
We’re getting rain again, which is hard to take, since we’d just been starting to enjoy days outside, when the weather turned again. I think tomorrow we start drying out, after Monday & Tuesday’s drizzle, torrents, and heavy rain, and I’m REALLY looking forward to it.
Got mucho work done on the felted blanket/hanging/whatever (or its components, at any rate), with all the crappy weather…I’m actually all done stitching the little circles to each other. Now I’ve got to gather them all together into a cohesive pattern across the background. Hmmmmm. I think all of the fun sewing is done…if I remember correctly, the rough wool of the background fabric was hell on the knuckes last time, and I’ve just gone and doubled the size of the background this time. I may be cursing my crafting ways, very soon.
Rainy Halloween
Well, it’s one of those weekends.
Had a substantial amount of work to bring home, and it’s rainy. Somehow, I’ll figure out a way to make bracelets to sell, knit some of the BSJ #2, and do some baking or cooking, as well as cranking out presentation swag.
C. & I have a trip planned to REI tomorrow: we didn’t have one in our area before, and it’s sort of the mecca of outdoors gear. Pricey, to be sure, but well worth a trip to poke around & look at things, try stuff out. I’ve been to the Boulder store, and it’s huge & fun.
Still raining
Been home since yesterday, as I’ve gotten some plague or other, and am trying to rest up so I can actually go on vacation. And it’s…RAINING! Yep, rained no less that 4 times yesterday, and looks like it’s about to start up again this morning. Unreal. I’m wondering if Rob McKenna* is around.
(*From So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams:
“Rob McKenna had two hundred and thirty-one differently types of rain entered in his little book, and he didn’t like any of them…
And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he didn’t have know it, Rob Mckenna was a Rain God. All he knew what that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.”)
Danger! Vegan Lime Cheesecake
It’s as persuasive as a brain slug. Once it’s in the fridge, watch out. It’s hard to think of anything else. We’re demolishing it over the weekend, and will lament the resulting weight gain quietly, over the course of the next week or so.
How can it be?
I wish I’d been keeping track of how many days it’s rained in the last 3 weeks, because it’s astounding. Everything is damp. We can’t work outside, except to harvest waterlogged strawberries & leafy greens, and hope that the sun wins the daily battle soon.
The reverse is worse, of course: no one wants a drought. Damn. Damn! I have so much to do, and no way to do it, right now.
Back to spinning like a mad spinning thing, there’s nothing else can be done.
PS. Baked the vegan lime cheesecake last night: tastes very good, but totally like key lime pie. NOTHING like cheesecake. WIll be correcting the pies with a whipped “cream” layer, to see if the surmise is correct.
Rainy days
Lucky me, that Apple released the 3.0 update…Camera Plus won’t work right now. So, enjoy the photo of the rainy day without the benefit of Camera Plus’ optimization.
Hey! More rain!
Time for baking.
In the effort to use up the lime juice, I decided to try a risky thing: a vegan cheesecake. Bought the Tofutti “cream cheese”, the Earth Balance shortening & graham crackers to make the crust…and away we’ll go. Probably on Saturday, or maybe Friday night. The sucky thing about cheesecake is that you have to wait a good handful of hours before eating it. Grrrr! The lime cupcakes were fun, but I’m so over making things with all that butter…just makes me feel sluggish, somehow.
It’s just over a week til vacation & I’m really excited to go: my twin nephews are getting older by the day & I want to see how much bigger they are from last year. I mean, they’ll be 2 in August…time is really going by fast.
Rain for days & days
Trying to finish the garden fence, but the weather’s not cooperating. Grrrrrr.
Had a new experiment yesterday: scalding flour to make bread. Well. It probably would have worked out ok, except I did my usual n00b bread-baking mistake, and forgot the salt. And bread without salt is just…yuck.
Otherwise, it’s not bad. Good texture, etc. I’m converting it to breadcrumbs, and consider it a lesson learned. Sort of. I’ve “learned” this particular lesson before, with remarkably little retention.
I want to bake something else, to use up the rest of the lime juice, but am hard pressed to figure out what. Something light, I think. Hmmmm.
A spinning FOOL
I recently saw a vest that someone on Ravelry had knitted, and it really grabbed my attention, but the recommended yarn (Noro Kochoran) is reputed to be very…shed-dy…that can’t be a word. The yarn sheds mightily. So, I grabbed my giant tumbleweed of stashed roving, got out the Blue Steel (4 oz.) and Camo (4 oz.) blue-faced leicester wool from Zarzuela’s Fibers, and went to town.
I’ve been spinning ever since, and just finished setting the twist in the wool long enough for the stupid rain to come back AGAIN, and drive me inside to dry it over the fire. I’m more appreciative than ever of the wood-burning stove.
In other news, key lime cupcakes were baked & consumed…and the lime/cilantro coleslaw was shredded, mixed & consumed…and now I’m looking for a few more recipes, so I can use up all of the organic lime juice, because it’s just that f***ing good.
And I’ve been installing more garden fencing…we’re looking even more Englishy-cottagy, now that the rains have increased our green lushness to at least 400%. I mean, it’s usually very verdant and pretty around here well into fall, unless we get a drought, but this year, it’s vivid & dark & amazing.
We also have mushrooms coming up everywhere:
Unidentified mushroom
I really wish I knew what some of them were: I’m too afraid to eat any of them, though.
Tomorrow holds much of the same glorious boring stuff: spinning, knitting, cooking, garden work, walking…I have no complaints at all.
My Dad’s Pet Fig Trees
real food challenge
my awesome cousin