Garden Pics

Seedwatch ’08 cont.

Seed update, the coleus has sprung, and the echinacea (coneflower) is on the verge. I think I had my sunflowers way too far from the light source, and the ornamental cabbage too, so they’re kinda wacky. Now that I can actually move around a bit better I constructed a super-large platform atop the ironing board, to bring eveyrthing closer to the light. Hope it’s not too late to fix them. If it is, well, live and learn!

It’s so NICE to be able to move and do stuff. You have no idea. Or maybe you do. :-) pictures after the jump Continue reading »

We Scoff at Rain, Darlink

OK so here’s a cool thing that happened to me. The guys who are rehabbing the house next door asked me if I minded if they painted my foundation white to match theirs. Um… nope. Knock yourself out there, bub. Paint away.

Then a few days later they said they were going to have their contractor up on the exterior of the third floor, removing some kind of rotten fascia board and lining it with copper and replacing it and painting it all white. Did I mind if they did my side too? Again I say “Yeah, go for it.”

Then I was making conversation with this peddler of free services and asked what he paid for his new windows, mentioning that I needed new ones in the front because they both leaked. He said “Oh yeah, our new ones leak too, it’s because of that rotten fascia board right there. That’s why we’re fixing it.” And lo and behold he was RIGHT. Not only does his newly-painted board thing look nice and neat, but it’s raining like all-get-out* here and these windows are not leaking! Now, I still need new windows there, but this buys me time and takes them from a priority 2 project down to… say, priority 5. Sweet huh? Continue reading »

SeedWatch ’08

OK so after a few weeks of my shuffling down to the basement and peering down at plastic trays while making “Hrmmmm…” noises, the seeds have decided to sprout, AND HOW.

It’s actually damn cool to see. Now, I did read a thing this week in Fine Gardening that I should have read BEFORE I started this, which is that you need to put your lamp only a foot above your seeds (mine is maybe 3-4 ft above) so that the seeds don’t strain toward the light and therefore get “leggy.” Some of my seeds are looking a little leggy. But then, my legs are stumpy, so if my seeds are somewhat legalicious this will all even out in the wash. Or something like that. But anyway! I am quite excited about it all and I present to you…THE SEEDS. Or maybe THE SPROUTS.

SIX WEEKS and counting, people!

OK, so six weeks today was when I decided to hurl myself down the stairs for attention and sympathy. And I have to tell you, the attention and sympathy are lacking and the pain and inconvenience are more than I bargained for. So I will definitely think twice before I try that trick again.

SIX WEEKS. Damn. It seems like longer. I go back to the doctor a week from Monday to see how I am healing and if I get the robocop leg off or not. I don’t know if there’s an intermediary step between robocop leg and setting me free to walk on my own, so some kind of mini-robocop-leg may be in my future too.

In the meantime I have gained much skillz in:

• cast-condom donning
• monkeying my way up and down the stairs
• finding the cripple entrance to the building
• putting up with people’s asshole “Oh I had the same thing but twice as bad and for twice as long!” stories. (Thanks fuckwad, that makes my personal hell of pain and disability SO MUCH MORE BEARABLE.)

I have not become any better at:

• learning my limits
• taking it easy
• counting my blessings
• suffering fools
• kneeling down to do things when one leg don’t bend too good

It’s getting particularly annoying now that the weather’s perking up and I want to be out in my garden. Gardening is mostly kneeling-down, and it’s just not happening with this thing on. I have raked some stuff up and cleaned some leaves away from plants though. Also, I have a SHEDLOAD of bulbs coming up. I remember planting what seemed like 796,000 bulbs this fall, and it’s paying off now because I have little leaves poking through the bare soil in many many places! Excitement. Pictures tomorrow, mayhap.

Now I am off to a late dinner and midnight movie, and to remember what it was like to be a night person, before working for a school turned me into some awful hybrid non-night-and-also-non-morning person. I had a meeting this morning at 7:30 in the AM, people! There should be a law. Enforceable with affliction of boils.

Seedlings!

Well, not yet seedlings. But soon!

So I blogged the other week about the nifty pot-maker that I ordered from burpee.com. It came last week and I set to making itty-bitty paper pots. I didn’t have any newspaper because I don’t get the daily paper (waste of time, ink, paper, resources in general – especially my limited mental resources) but I did have an old copy of the New York Review of Books that I didn’t mind sacrificing, and it’s printed partly on newsprint-weight paper, so that was perfect. (OK, I admit that it makes me feel curiously cerebral, recycling that particular publication and growing my organic seeds in it. Sue me.)

Behold the pottage!

Here’re the strips of paper you need to use to make the pots, along with the little pot maker and an apple, for scale.

Of course, you don’t know how big that apple is. It could be gargantuan, or minuscule. Such is the mysterious aura I enjoy projecting around myself and my activities.

OK, here’s the whole mess next to the gimp work-station (laptop set up on first floor so I don’t have to go upstairs to compute) Note the OSHA-approved extension cord that strings along the table, chair and floor because the fuckwits who rehabbed this place (may a sandbag fall on their heads) did not think that someone might, you know want to ever plug in something that is sitting on a table in the ONLY POSSIBLE PLACE to put a table in the kitchen. But I digress.

So I needed something to set the little pots in so that when I watered them they were still supported and wouldn’t sag and melt all over the place. So today at Home Despot I got these cheapie plastic liner things which are the perfect height and hold 16 mini-pots apiece. I got six of them and some extra bags of seed-starter potting mix.

And no, I won’t leave them stacked like that, obviously. That’s just for storage until I figure out if I am hanging a light and planting in the basement or finding somewhere up here to put them.

OK that last one is partly to show my official Stuff White People Like, KitchenAid™ stand mixer. I love it like it was my shiny stainless steel baby. Sue me again.

ANYWAY, I am very excited. I had to make some more pots tonight but I will finish them tomorrow I think and then get to planting mah seeds!

Who To Sue

Tomorrow, when I am dead of industrial solvent fumes poisoning, you may blame the Bosnian workers next door who are not only prone to holler at unreasonable levels for protracted amounts of time, but who are also apparently immune to industrial solvent fumes due to some kind of Eastern-European Chernobyl-spawned chromosome abnormality. (That and them liberally spreading said whatever-the-fuck-this-stink-is around right before they left for the day.)

Seriously, I think I need a canary in here to know when to get the hell out of stink-town before I drop dead.

Staying home again

Once this is over I am putting up a tent and living in the back yard for a month. Just to not be in the house.

Wait. No. I will get shot and killed. Fudge. Well, I will think of something to demarcate most strikingly the transition from “house-bound crippled chick” to “regular chick who goes places.” Sounds like there should be a roasted goat involved at some point.

So today is going to be more of the same that yesterday was, including pondering on my unwanted, unnecessary and yet still intensely painful reproductive cycle. Oh, and hoping that the carpet installers from next door are caught in a snowdrift somewhere and can’t get back here today to bang on my walls for 8 hours straight while they blast EZ listening music.

Forward Planning

So, it’s cheering me this week to start planning for my garden. It reminds me that eventually winter will have to end, and that I can get out grubbing in the dirt and making things grow again – with this year hopefully being more impressive as some of last year’s perennials will have had a chance to take hold. I am hoping for great things from my hydrangeas and roses, especially.

However this year I have also vowed to start more things from seed. It’s really fun to go the nursery and buy the pretty plants they have, but holy god is it expensive. Starting things from seed is more difficult, but I had some stellar results last year— from my Amish Broom Corn and my sunflowers (before the powdery mildew got them, dammit) particularly. So I have been ordering seeds from TinySeeds.com. They carry ‘Botanical Interests’ seeds that I very much like, many of which are organic. I am going to focus on a lot more vining plants this year, as I loved the ones I had last summer. I am also going to plan better for them and try not to end up with the hot mess of blob-like Moonflower like I had last year.

It lives! It grows over everything! Eek!
I am going to try to cover most of my fence in climbers, if I can. I am also going to try a few fruits too, particularly strawberries. And this Love Lies Bleeding looks as if it’s going to be cool. I am going to get a table set up in the basement with some lighting over it, and do a huge batch of seeds.

And I also bought this very cool thing which is not a sex toy, but a seed-starting pot maker. Apparently you can make biodegradable pots with it, out of strips of old newspaper. It’s all kinds of triple happiness since you:

• save money by not having to buy pots
• save the earth by recycling newspaper
• save more plants since you can plant the whole paper-pot and everything, thus reducing transplant shock and keeping more seedlings alive

I am very excited about it and the whole “getting seeds started” thing. I need a fun project like this, I need to be around things that are happy and alive and growing and not covered in some kind of of evil cosmic sludge, like I feel the rest of my life is.

I also vow to take many many more pictures this year to mark my progress. I’ve joined this garden site: MyFolia.com where I can track the progress of my plants and keep a record of what I have planted and if it’s working out. Last year the mosquitoes were so bad that they kept me out of the garden many evenings, and this year I am going to figure out how to battle them. I don’t want to use chemicals, so I will be planting some anti-mosquito plants and using lots more citronella candles and stuff – I need to find some natural repellents to wear too, I hate spraying myself with DEET – bleh.

Anyway, so the planning is making me happy, and when my orders start arriving in the next week or two I think I will be even more happy. OK, so I have to go down in the horrible basement for this project, but perhaps this will make me not hate the horrible basement so much?

Couldn’t catch a break with a butterfly net.

I was exhausted all day today. It was the end of a full week at work, my first in a month, and I was really feeling it. I haven’t been getting great sleep because the dogs are reacting to my stress and getting pissy with each other at night – which means that they wake me up with their squabbling. From about 1 p.m. onward all I could think about was going home and taking a nap. Finally, end of the day, I get to come home. It’s gorgeous weather here today, too. In the 50′s maybe, and sunny. Happy times weather. I get home, I feed the dogs, I check my email and I haul my sad carcass upstairs. My bedroom is the sunniest room in the house, light streams in from four large windows, and the whole atmosphere up there is extremely restful and peaceful on a sunny day like today. I take off the huge Darth Vader leg and nestle under the covers, settling the Pack down with me, and prepare to doze off.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG BANG!

WTF?

SLAM, BANG, BANGBANGBANG.

Oh nice. They’ve started (as best I can tell) laying a hardwood floor next door. At 5:30 pm on a Friday. In the middle of prime Susan nap time. Fuckers. Dirty, dirty fuckers. BANGBANGBANGBANG. SLAM! BANG! I try to ignore it, but that’s kind of hard to ignore. So I doze fitfully for an hour and a half, at which point they stop. But by then the puppies have had all the nap they’re in the mood for – at least Jake has. He starts jumping around the bed like a crazed mini-marsupial. BOUNCE! BOUNCE! Whine. Paw. Whine. SCRATCH SCRATCH. BOUNCE! And then he jumps onto the pillow where my foot is resting and by reflex I do what? I kick out to keep him away. Motherfucking ow.

So, now we’re all up and back downstairs. I can live without a nap.

Well. I am going to have to.

My Real Estate Agent Screwed Me Hard

OK so you have read about all my housing drama. Problem after fucking problem that a decent real-estate agent (and not some dodgy, down-home friend of my brother) would have helped me identify and run from. Stupidly, having never bought a house before, I trusted him. He was a friend of my brother, after all.

• Recommend a banker for my mortgage? Sure! (Got a good interest rate, but cost me $1500 in legal fees from his shitty advice)
• Recommend a title company? Sure! (Same thing re: legal fees, from their “mistakes” in closing, leaving me with a somewhat dodgy transference issue with the title. Company was later fined for their business practices.)
• Recommend a building inspector? Sure! (Didn’t notice a hole in my foundation, the fact that most of my appliances fell off the back of a truck and thus were missing their serial #’s and that several of the windows in this place were practically ready to fall from their sashes. Also didn’t point out that the “three foot brick firewall” between these two row houses did not, in reality, exist.)
• Recommend a roofer to evaluate the roof? Sure! (Told me that the roof needed to be replaced, but “would hold up for now” Roof started leaking the week that I moved in. Also told me, in answer to my specific query, that the [nonexistent] three-foot firewall extended right up through the roof, yes sir. Those two roofs were NOT connected, they were separate roofs. Yup.)

So I was checking out my house on Google Earth. It’s finally been updated so this picture was taken after I moved in.  (BTW if you are interested in and able to use this image to track down my house and come and kill me, then good. You’ve got skills and time on your hands. Bring it.)

Here’s what you’re looking at – the top picture is the plain bird’s-eye view of the building.

The left (bottom of the picture) side of the building is mine. The right side was occupied by Charles the Burglar & Family, but since their eviction has become the property of some guy who intends to “flip” it. Mostly through painting it really hard.

In the lower picture I have added a helpful big red line to indicate where the three-foot brick firewall would be if it weren’t a figment of real-estate imagination.

I’ve also circled what I (admittedly no roof expert) would identify as… hmmm… a massive fucking problem on my roof, coincidentally right above where I am experiencing some leaking issues.

In the meantime, Dodgy McRealtor & His Wacky Band of Miscreant Pals are off screwing the next chick who knows jack-all about buying a house.

If I had known better I would have checked, I would have found my own experts, I would have Trusted No One, I would have been on my hands and knees inspecting this house from top to bottom my own damn self. But I didn’t know. (And I only had what, 20-something days? Whatever.)

All I am saying is that I hope this guy eventually receives the full karmic repercussion of his way of doing business. That’s all.

Back to Work Monday

The end of my 2-week vacation is almost here – I have to go back to work Monday. I’ve been absolutely dreading it, not only because my job has been sucking huge amounts of wang lately, but also because it meant the end of my long-anticipated Free Creative Time.

I assumed that with all this Free Creative Time on my hands I would be SO productive. I would write for hours, I would catch up on all my reading, I would do tons of artwork. I was so totally wrong. I have felt mostly shiftless, aimless, wandering. This is too much free time, actually. It seems that I work best when I have a lot going on, I dash out the best stuff in the 20 minutes I can catch here and there. Who knew? In addition to that I am so thouroughly sick of my own company that I could scream. If I’d been able to go to Savannah as I had wanted to (Thanks again, ancient water heater, shitty insulation, Laclede Gas and empty frozen barn next door.) then the whole “sick of me” thing wouldn’t have been an issue. But here for 2 weeks on my own… eeesh. Never thought I would look forward to talking to people, but I do.

So while on vacation I have shopped, organized, cataloged, cleaned up and otherwise accomplished a lot of things that I meant to get done, things that take no creative brain but lots of time – so that’s great. My Runtime is in fighting trim, my downloaded music is all backed up to CD, my closets are clean, my MENDING is done, for God’s sake! I’ve painted, hung pictures, re-organized, weather-proofed, lots of things that needed doing. And I am rested, finally. I’ve been sleeping well, chilling out as much as possible, trying not to stress about anything. I know that when I get back to work I’ve got a lot to do as far as either giving it one last shot (honestly, that’s unlikely) or going into full-fledged job-search mode (unpleasant, but more likely). * Continue reading »

New Table

I had a Highly Successful Shopping Trip yesterday, and I found a small table (like I had been looking for) for my bedroom. Here ’tis. Awesome, huh? The chair I had already.

Oh, and I didn’t make my bed, no.

I am on vacation, judge all you want.

Wish me luck

Soon my parents will arrive to advise me on all of the things I am doing wrong in my life, at my house, with my dogs and just in general.

My father will prophesy doom and myriad gloom in regard to things affecting me yet completely out of my control. When asked for advice to forestall such catastrophic results he will have no advice to give.

He identifies the problems, people – he doesn’t fix the problems. We all have our own role to play, after all.

OK, sorry – bitterness seems to be at Def-Con 1 today.

I love the holidays.

Meet Me in St. Louis

So, looks like the trip to Savannah is off for this holiday. I am done cursing about it, there’s nothing to be done at this point.

I will try again in either January or February, I have long weekends in both of those months which I can extend to make a nice 4 or 5-day trip.

For your consideration, and hopeful amusement, I leave you with the following quote from the above-titled movie:

Daughter: I hate, loathe, despise and abominate money!

Father: You also spend it.