Archives

<3 Microclimates!

Aug2

Guys, I am so excited about my garden!!

It’s not a big garden – two 4’x24′ strips – but it’s going wild.

I’ve been very good about watering it any day we don’t have rain (This particular corner of NYS isn’t in a drought so I’m not breaking any water regulations) and the heat has been awesome for my tomato plants. They are just sproinging out all over the place – this is going to be (knock on wood) the best tomato crop we’ve ever gotten, and not just ’cause I went nuts planting plants.

The Finger Lakes climate is generally different from that where I grew up – Lake Ontario has its own band of warmer, wetter weather, so this area, 2 hours away, is colder in winter but less snowy, in general (No giant lake to moderate, or dump snow on us). That’s got to be part of it, the unseasonably warm March also part, and I’m guessing microclimates have something to do with it, too: we’ve got no shortage of water here. I mean, our well has an overflow tube O_O.

I am /very excited/ to see what this crop provides – and we are already eating tomatoes and cukes from our garden!!

😀

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/381632.html. You can comment here or there.

State of the Lyn!

Jul29

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything about my life. Can I blame summer?

Yesterday morning, we woke to find the kittens nowhere. I wandered around the house making cat-calling noises for a minute or two – until T noticed that the living room screen was out.

Then came ten heart-stopping minutes of wandering around the yard making cat-calling noises, until we found them hiding under the lilac bush, soaked and miserable. But safe, whole, and healthy. Thank you, god of cats.

Wet? Yes. It’s been /pouring/ here. Thursday, I came home from work, started to thaw dinner… and the power went out. A dinner of Subway subs later, we learned that a tornado had touched down in Elmira, an hour away, but all we’d gotten closer to Ithaca was thunder, lightning, and rain.

All this rain has been good for the garden; my tomatoes are going wild. So are my squash and my peppers. It’s going to (knock on wood) be a good harvest)

And speaking of wood – we pulled the Horrid Paneling off of the dining room and living room, and found… well, lots of wood, in one wall. “Bare Studs” the size of trees, where plaster and lathe had clearly been removed at some point. The rest of the walls have unpainted but heavily-nailed-in drywall. This is going to be interesting.

How’s your summer going?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/378651.html. You can comment here or there.

What’s Lyn Been Doing?

Jun22

Not being on the computer much, that’s for sure!

State of Nano: As of this morning, I have written 45,378 on my Addergoole, Year 9, 1st Semester piece. That, with previously written material (over 11.5K words, wow!) brings it to 11 chapters and some mini-interludes, which means that I’ll finish 12 chapters in just over 50K. Hopefully by the end of the weekend.

State of the garden: we bought another pepper plant (shoshito) and another tomato plant (pear-cherry). Also a cilantro, finally.

The squash are having fun, stretching out finally. The onions are being onions, ditto the leeks.

I have bean sprouts! And pea sprouts! and radish sprouts! (The sort in the garden dirt; I also have sprouts growing in a jar in the kitchen).

And last night I started planting a bag of salt potatoes that had gone to sprout.

State of the everything else: T has been cleaning out the loading ramp that came with the house – essentially a dirt ramp framed in railroad ties. We plan to use it as a planting bed.

After we get the safe out of it. O_O

And the dresser is very nearly done! I have to decide if I want to sand, smooth, and then 4th-coat the top, the sides and drawers are done, and the knobs will get here this week.

And … that explains, I think, the lack of anything else lately. If I owe you Giraffe Words, I apologize. When I hit 50 K, I will start working on the giraffeyness again!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/355432.html. You can comment here or there.

Where has all the Blogging Gone?

Jun14

I have been remiss in blogging lately! If you have noticed the camp-nano posts, you can easily see one reason why – I am trying hard to get 50K done by the 20th (the 21st is our 10-year wedding anniversary).

The other reason? Summer!

This weekend I finally got a portion of the garden put in – planted 7 tomato plants in 3 varieties, 7 hot pepper plants in 4 varieties (6 of 2 more to plant), basil in 2 varieties, sage, oregano, and beans. I weeded the carrot patch (apologies to Anne Bishop readers) and laid down weed cloth over the squash (well, around them), too.

And I got another coat of poly on the dresser and started painting it!

In terms of nano, I’m looking to get most of the first semester of Addergoole Year 9 completed: the series will cover, in 52 weeks, one year of the Addergoole school through the eyes of the twenty-some members of the Ninth Cohort.

Also: We got two new kittens. Their names are Oligarchy and Theocracy and they are 12 weeks old and beautiful.

And a link: Finally, a Home where you can enjoy the Post-apoc.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/353197.html. You can comment here or there.

Belated Last-weekend-was-awesome post

May25

So… Last weekend was awesome.

I feel guilty about that, because I still miss Drake. It’s hard to even look at his things without sniffling. But this weekend was still really good, and I think that’s okay.

First: there was a small wine festival about 40 minutes out of town (At the local ski resort, which was clever of them). We drank lots of wine and had lots of fun and bought a couple bottles – and I may not be allergic to goat wool!

We stopped on the way home at our favorite bulk store, got roast beef and cheese and pasta, and stopped at two plant stores and the beer store for plants and olive oil, then came home to a dinner of shrimp with olive oil, blue cheese crumbles, tomato and pasta. Nom.

Between Saturday and Sunday, we planted acorn squash, leeks, leeks, leeks, flowers, and two raspberry bushes, worked on the dresser, weeded,… oh, yeah, planted peas… and generally spent a lot of time outdoors playing in the yard. Awesome weekend. Absolutely awesome.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/346297.html. You can comment here or there.

Requiem for the Sugar Cat

May15

Drake passed away today at the vet’s, after a short struggle with a bug that wouldn’t let go and, they believe, the beginnings of cancer in his lungs.

He was a good cat. Not a smart cat, not a graceful or subtle cat, but a loving cat and a good, big, sharp cat.

When we brought him home, all of half a pound, he looked at our older cat – Gatsby, already four years old and a grown up – and hissed at him. All balls, that cat, even after we finally had him fixed.

He once won an intimidation challenge against a house-guest – Drake insisted it was his chair, and the guest relented and picked another seat. 16 lbs at his heaviest, 12 lbs only when he wasn’t feeling well, Drake was a flesh-eater with a well-deserved violent reputation. More than one of our friends bears scars from learning the hard way that Drake should not be fucked with.

He was, at home, an affectionate cat, a lap cat, demanding in his affection (he liked to rest his head on my mouse hand so I had to pay attention to him). He liked to sleep under the blankets, but unlike his brother, who predeceased him in 2010, he couldn’t stand to have his face under the blankets.

He was never good at fetch, but he sure liked to try (He was good at the “get,” but not so good at the “bring it all the way back”). Like all cats, his favorite toys were things like the seal on milk containers, or a balled-up piece of paper (this caused trouble when starting a fire in the fireplace sometimes).

I could go on forever. We had him for eleven years, and it was not nearly long enough. I will miss my Draker for a very, very long time. I keep picturing picking him up and squishing him to me, the way I did when I was upset. But I’m upset now, and I can’t hug him.

Bear with me for a few days? I may be a bit rawer than normal

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/341007.html. You can comment here or there.

Using what we have

May13

We have, right now, a lawn service for mowing (cheaper in the short run then buying a mower, and we have a rather large yard). We also had a delay in getting them to mow this spring, so we then had a need to rake because our lawn was drowning under the cuttings.

We have, also, a small garlic garden by the loading dock (doesn’t everyone have a loading dock?) which T. planted from Chinese-food-store garlic last autumn. The garlic is doing very well, but it was getting a bit choked with weeds. It needed mulching.

A=B = garlic bed mulched with grass cuttings. Using what we have. I love it.

This weekend, I also planted some alyssums, a bay tree, and a lavender plant in pots on my patio. And I finished planting the butternuts. Meanwhile, T. raked grass and played with his new sickle, knocking down weeds the mowing service didn’t get to.

We still have a double handful of plants to put in the ground that we bought this weekend: we gave [personal profile] capriox our little play house for her goats, so we’re going to plant the resultant square of dirt with raspberries, pansies, groundcover, and alyssums.

Having a yard is a lot of fun!

Unrelated: I am going to have reason to send a bunch of letters/postcards soon. I am looking for small-business greeting cards that are pretty and $5/less a card. Want to sell me some? Know someone I should look at? Drop me a line.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/338872.html. You can comment here or there.

Planting and Raking… Homeowner joys

May11

Today, I planted three of my 6 butternut plants I started from seed. The ground where we’re planting them is all rocks and sand, so I dug a big hole for each and filled it with composted manure and peat moss, watered well, and prayed it doesn’t snow again.

This was going to be a longer update, but after planting and raking (first mowing was a bit late)… I’m going to fall down now.

ALso? [personal profile] kelkyag? Thank you!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/337043.html. You can comment here or there.

Weekend Finds and Fun

May8

(Monday went by before I managed to write this up!)

We found a bay tree!!

Background: we have been looking for a bay plant to grow for several years, through several nurseries. They’re a Mediterranean tree and can’t survive outside in a NY State winter, but they can be brought inside for the winter if grown in a pot – and T. cooks with a lot lot lot of bay.

So we finally found one utterly by accident while looking for pepper plants! SO EXCITED!

(We also: saw the Avengers, bought a cherry tomato, and bought sage, mint, mint, and strawberries. And Lavender).

Capriox came to hang out Sunday afternoon for a while – we ate banana bread and showed off our mess. 😀 It’s always awesome when friends come to visit. <3

Then we got to work on the “invasives” garden: A spot by the eastern side of the house, between the chimney and the garbage cans, where I planted freecycled chives last year. This year I added chocolate mint and pineapple mint in these two giant square cement blocks that had been stacked near the chimney. Should take them a couple weeks to grow out of that!

Link du jour: Vertical Farm in a gutter!

Please check out the Summer Giraffe Poll and the Giraffe Theme request.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/334317.html. You can comment here or there.

Thursday it’s Summer

May3

The sun is out! My sandals are on! The weather is beautiful again! Summer must be here.. .*knock on wood*

I’ve been sanding away on the dresser, and hope to have it ready to paint by the weekend. I’m ridiculously happy about this. *bounce bounce*

Dinner tonight will be chicken soup – stage 2 in our 3-stage leftovers meal: Rotisserie Chicken –> chicken noodle soup –> risotto. Mmmm tasty. 🙂

Really, that’s about it going on in my life right now. I’m trying to stay back on the Weight Watchers Wagon, to start peeling off the rest of the weight before my cousin’s October wedding. And, of course, I’m writing.

Home-redo projects I like:
Floating Wall Display Shelf I might need one of these in my study someday.

Chair transformations – I’ve been contemplating doing something like this (get 4 mismatched chairs & paint & upholster them to match) – but that’s far down the line.

Also? been knitting like mad.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/331777.html. You can comment here or there.