Irony is the Shackles of Youth

I am beginning to despair. This scene is never going to end. Stiles, please just run naked through the woods so Derek can catch you so i can end this damn scene.

I was hoping to get more done tonight, but I got distracted by Word with Friends. Then my cat decided I had typed enough and sat on both my wrists, as she does.

Tomorrow I acquire plywood and MDF for the padded headboard I am making. I think after the headboard, I will be make some fabric cornices for the dining room. I'm going to have extra plywood around so why not use it up? Also, full curtains wouldn't look right in that room. I'm thinking something like this cornice.

Also, I am ready for spring. I want to put in miniture blueberry bushes in my front bed. Also, I want to see how the tulips I planted in the two big planters out front look when they bloom. Finally, I'm curious to see if any of the trees we planted in the fall made it. If not, I'll be doing another order with Arbor Day (for half price replacements). But none of that can happen until SPRING.

Come on weather. Turn warm. I know the people in New England would appreciate it.

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO TAKE FIVE BAMBOO POLES AND MAKE A FUCKING TEE-PEE SHAPE THAT ACTUALLY STANDS? DAMMIT!

I will be traveling all of next week to Hawaii for work. This of course, means 16 hours in a plane there and an red-eye on the way back. Oh the things I do for work! As I told my co-workers, I will learn to play a sad, sad song on the ukelele since my violin seems out of place given the circumstances. :D

I went ahead and started the oak leaf lettuce today because of the trip and when I get back I get to start 21 violas. Lots and lots of violas. The weekend after that I'll probably make the raised bed and start planting. EXCITING.

Cabbage and broccoli started indoors. It was raining this morning, but was nice enough this afternoon for me to do some yardwork. There are daffodils in our front beds and all interspersed among the English ivy that has taken over the back slope of our yard. Tomorrow I am going to attempt to remove some of the ivy without damaging the daffodils. My goal is to remove it slowly enough and get enough bushes/small trees/plants/ground cover in there to keep the slop from eroding when I do. I do not want what some of my neighbors have: a bare slope that is quickly eroding into their yard.

I also did some light cleaning and am finally, finally going to get my sister's Christmas presents in the mail. Where did 2 months go?

I also wrote a bit more on the guivere story this morning. I changed a few things and settled a few more in my mind. I worked on another story while in New York, but I swear, it is some of the most stilted writing I have put on paper. Ugh. I definitely need to rewrite it at some point. I also found a story I'd started at some point with super powered twins: one a superhero and the other a supervillain. I get the feeling they were cloned from someone, but I don't remember exactly the background I had going for this. Oh well. Just means I can create a new one.

We have a bathroom painted! There's a few places that need minor touch ups, but for the most part it looks awesome. The color was called Gothic Amethyst. miome made the comment that it sounds like a goth stripper's stage name. :D

The house has the worst molding I've ever seen. It's covered in about 8 layers of paint and half the time no miter cuts were done, so the molding just abuts the next piece of molding. Blech. Eventually we'll replace it, but right now we'll live with it.

Sometimes I can just look at a plant and tell you what family it is. Might not know the exact plant, but I can guess the family (and sometimes genera). I'm really good at identifying those in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) and can usually identify those in the aster family (which isn't that hard because there are so many of them). Recently, I discovered that okra was in the mallow family, which is the same family that gives us hibiscus. All it takes is to look at the flowers to see the resemblance. They are really striking.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a large, showy white flower with a dark red center growing up under the trees in the English ivy infested slope that is 1/3 of the backyard. I took one look and went "That's a hibiscus. Do we have a native a hibiscus in this area?" The reason I thought it was a native was because the house sits on thick, red clay. It's impossible to get non-native species (except English ivy -_-) to grow there without a lot of help. This flower hadn't had help in over a year, because I guarantee the people we bought the house from did not do any sort of actually gardening.

Turns out we do get hibiscus and it is native. What's growing on the slope is most likely Halberdleaf hibscus. It can grow in clay as long as it's moist clay. Given the amount of mosquitoes in my backyard, it doesn't surprise me to find out that that area is moist and doesn't drain well. I'm hoping it'll reseed for next year and I'll be able to get some cuttings. I would love to have more of those plants up in that area. It's certainly prettier than the English ivy.

It's also nice because now I know exactly what conditions exist under all that ivy. When I clean it out, I can plant more natives (again, I've got clay. Not much else is going to thrive there).

Next weekend we should have internet! Maybe that way I'll be able to update from the house instead of waiting till I get back to the apartment.

Planted all the herbs today. Then I got the Swiss chard seeds in their pot and set up three of my smaller pots to see if I can grow onions/scallions inside. I don't have the best of luck with cold weather crops since I tend to plant them too late in the spring and fall. I'm going to try to grow the onions inside where I can better control the temperature to see if I can succeed at getting them to grow.

Work has me writing more documentation. Which has killed my desire to write when I get home. Sigh. Maybe this weekend?

I am seriously considering ordering seeds for a Cheyenne Bush Pumpkin for next year and growing them in the large pot that I used for the Cherokee Purple tomato. It says it can be grown in a large pot, but I'm not sure I believe it. Still, it could be interesting. I'd love to have fresh pumpkin. I am intrigued.

I also have the perfect icon for this. XD

1) Went to an art fair on Saturday. Miome and I wandered for two hours and still did not see all the booths. It was huge and awesome. And sometimes expensive. There was one lady selling simple knitted hats for $65 and people were buying them. The only thing special about them was that they were felted. Well hell, I can churn out one of those suckers using my round loom in an afternoon. If I'd known all I needed to do was felt the damn thing, I could have practically paid for my books this year. What a deal!

2) I bought a ceramic fish. I know this sounds crazy, but my grandfather was an avid fisherman. I can remember summers with him spent fishing. When he moved to GA from NC, he had to leave behind the large bass he had mounted on his wall. My mom said no way. He really wanted a fish to hang on his door, but my mom wanted something non-tacky. While at the art fair, I found one modeled from a real small-mouth bass. I bought it and am going to mount it on a nice board with my grandfather's last name beneath it. It'll be classy and a fish. My mom will not be able to complain.

3) Realized that I somehow lost a week. All the stuff for my internship isn't due until the week after next, meaning I could spend this weekend relaxing and not stressing. Awesome.

4) Turned the entire windowsill full of roma tomatoes from my plant into vegetable broth and pizza sauce. Next time I have got to remember to remove the skins before I boil them. I didn't think it would matted once they were blended up, but it does.

5) Called my sister so we could continue our plans for my mom's 60th birthday party. It's a secret. She doesn't know we're trying to get most of the family to come to a big party for lunch. She just thinks we're going to go out to eat with her. Heh. We are so devious.

Now to go to bed. If I can pull Miome away from the fanfic she's currently reading.

Today's good: I got a $1 off my bagel sandwich because I could answer the trivia question at the bagel shop. The question? What state did the first Krispy Kreme open in? Hell I could have told them the city as well off the top of my head. Winston-salem, NC.

Today's bad: Three days before my vacation (yeah, miome and I are going on vacation!) I start my period. -_-

In other news, one of my tomato plants (the roma) already has tomatos on it. They have just formed but still. Looks like I will have a good crop this year. I can't wait to try the Cherokee Purple tomatos. It's got blossoms and will soon start having fruit. I went ahead and fertilized both with the calcium enriched fertilizer in the hopes of staving off end rot in the fruit. We'll see if I got to them soon enough.

Went last night to one of the local Farmer's Market and they were selling plants. I had already set up my container garden so there really wasn't any room for anything else. But I figured what could it hurt to look?

I now have to go out, get another huge pot, several bags of soil, and another cage because I came back with a Cherokee Purple tomato plant. Sigh. It's supposed to be prolific and the lady assured me it would grow in a pot. We shall see.

Two weeks ago I started my early plants. These are the cold tolerant, frost resistant plants that will live even if it gets a bit nippy outside. Included in this list are three swiss chard plants, two bibb lettuces, and a mesclun mix. I have seedlings in all my little pots on the windowsill in my room. In about four more weeks I'll transplant all those seedlings to their pots outside on the balcony.

Swiss chard is my favorite of this group. It's heat tolerant so it'll grow all summer long, though I've been told it tastes better in cooler weather. I wouldn't know since "cooler weather" here means "kill everything with snow." Doubly so because I'm growing it in a pot to the roots get hit hard. I started with one plant last year because I'd never had it before (chard is notoriously hard to transport and tastes worse and worse the longer it is cut). I wound up starting two more plants half-way through the summer. This year I'm just going to grow three from the get go.

This weekend I'm going to start my second round of crops. These are the less cold tolerant ones and include a roma tomato, Rosa Bianca eggplant (which is purple and white striped), green onions (so we can finally have green onions when we want them and not when the store feel like providing them) and finally curly leaf kale. Technically I should have started the kale two weeks ago because it's more of a cold weather plant, but we just got the seeds for it today. miome really wanted some though, so I'm hoping we get some good leaves off of it before it dies off from heat.

I can't wait to get everything up and running this year. Our balcony is perfect for growing plants and I love being able to walk outside and getting fresh produce. If I'm lucky, there won't be a severe drought this year and my tomato will do better and give more fruit. I'm also going to do the water bottle method of watering (i.e. bury a water bottle in the soil when I plant it and fill that up every morning). Hopefully this will keep the plant more evenly watered.

Be prepared for pictures when things start going. I really want to show off the eggplant. From what I understand it'll be gorgeous when it blooms and then again when it starts bearing fruit.

- Go get tomato cage from Lowe's.
- Get sandpaper to finish making plant stand top
- Get shellac or something similar to make plant stand water proof
- Finish grocery list in attempt not to have to go to store half way through week
- Go grocery shopping (STICK TO THE LIST THIS TIME!!!)
- Pay bill
- Work on snail_mail_porn story.
- Buff out few dents miome found in crack story and put it up for others to see

EDIT: Lowe's did not have tomato cages. RAR. I have found a nursery that is located on one of the few roads I know in Indianapolis. I'll try there.

EDIT2: It is obviously too late in the season to get tomato cages. I have stakes. Not what I wanted, but it'll work. I'm tired now, so I'm going work on the story and put the grocery shopping off till tomorrow. Because I can.

( Behold the triumph! )

Last but not least, I've been working slowly on stories. Picked up and wrote some on Race the Wind. I've decided to stop fighting the story and just write whatever part I feel like writing instead of trying to make it go in order. It's the only way it's going to work.

Don't know if I'll post it out of order. I may make you people wait. XD