Category: Life and Times

Gardening is work

I’ve been trying to bring in the garden harvest this year so that Dean’s mom won’t have to when she gets back from Portugal. It’s making me really grumpy. Except for the tomatoes (which aren’t ready yet) there’s dill, Portuguese kale, and chard* collard greens in the garden. All of these get made into Green Soup all year long. The dill and kale are small, but there’s lots of it. It takes hours to sort through it all and get all the stems cut off. Then I have to wash everything, chop it up really small (think shredded lettuce) and put it in bags for the freezer. Not particularly hard work, just a lot of it. It feels like there’s a never-ending pile of greens to get through still.

I did find a cute little snail going through all the cut plants. I was taking them out of one sink and putting them in the other to wash. I wasn’t really watching my hands; after all the hours I was on autopilot. So I was a little freaked when I grabbed a plant and felt something slimy. I dropped it, then took a look. I found this guy:

Snail

I brought it—kale and all—downstairs where the camera was, but it was awake and searching for an escape at this point. So it fell off its kale branch and onto some paper I had on the floor. Poor thing. That’s twice it was dropped in the space of 5 minutes. It seemed happy enough, crawling around looking for its kale. After it had climbed back on, I carried it outside and put it back in the garden. I may as well let it munch on the stems that I’ve left in there.

*I was having chard for dinner and mixed up what I was cooking with what I was chopping. My bad.


Transportation Woes

This morning I decided to try driving Dean’s car around the residential areas some just to see if I could handle being on the road with the thing. Going without stalling was a breeze. Apparently I’ve got that down. Shifting is okay, but I could be faster which would be smoother on the car. All in all the driving part was fine. A few hiccups getting going on some left turns but I didn’t stall.

I went around the area quite a few times with no problems. I’m sure the mail lady was wondering why the heck I went by her a dozen times on the same road.

The real issue came when I had to get the car back in the garage. I stalled 3 times, only moving a few inches each time, before I could get the car going enough to get in there. It was incredibly frustrating.

Parking it was easy too. I’m straight, and lined up with the other car and there’s room on all sides. So, I think it was a success. I just need more practice and some courage to not be afraid of main roads.

ETA: I tried to take my bike to the mall after, and the brakes are loud and not really working, the thing to switch gears in the front is too low and rubs up against highest setting, and my chain broke after only a couple of minutes. I ended up walking it home and taking the bus.


Hybrids!

I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: City Folk a lot for the last couple of weeks. I usually don’t give much thought to the flowers and things in town, but this time I want to get the golden watering can so I’ve been planting a lot of flowers and trees. So, I started the game up yesterday and was very surprised to see that I now have my very own orange roses. It turns out that if you plant flowers of the same variety next to each other they can produce new flowers, and sometimes hybrids. See?

Orange Roses
Orange Roses

Orange flowers! I’m going to go back and move flowers around to try and get more pretty colours. By default you get white, yellow, and red.


I Have Skillz

I got a little over-enthusiastic sharpening one of the kitchen knives this morning. Using the steel is fun, so this particular knife ended up way sharper than was needed, considering I was only chopping some vegetables. While attempting to cut up some broccoli florets for my mac & cheese, the knife slipped ever so slightly and nicked the side of my index finger. If it were a dull knife it probably would have just slid right off, but instead I got a nice slice similar to a deep paper cut. The funny part about it is when I was slicing a tomato at dinnertime it happened again, but this time I caught the tip of my thumb. Again, it was just the slightest movement, but did more damage than it otherwise would have were the knife dull. *sigh* Yet another example of how clumsy I can be.


Staying Power

A wrote the last post about my hair because I had spent the previous few weeks contemplating combing it out. Part of me thought if I said something that it would tip the scales in favour of keeping them. Alas, my ploy did not work. I spent March 26th to 31st combing out all 44 dreads. I’m a little sad about it, but it did seem like the time for them to go. The plan is to wait 4 or 5 years and redo them, now that I know a lot more about taking care of dreads and how my hair reacts to them. I will be keeping them for at least a year next time, if not longer.


Now I'm Here

I have given up hope of finding a “real” library job in the area anytime soon given the current state of the economy. Though I will keep trying, I am going to move in a new direction for the time being and focus more on my crafts and the Bookbinding I home study course that I am doing.

With all the supplies hanging around and all the time I have to entertain myself, I shall fill the hours with spinning and dyeing yarn and fibre, creating knitting and cross-stitch patterns and working on related projects. I have been doing this to some extent but it has been a halfhearted effort and not as productive an endeavour as it could be.

I have finished watching the bookbinding lessons. All that is left is going over the textbook and finding a pair of good-quality dividers (which are proving much harder to locate than I thought) and I can start practicing with that as well.