9 posts tagged “garden”
For about five months I was only in Richmond during the week and stayed with a roommate in the Bellevue section of town. It's such a great neighborhood (sadly out of our price range), and down the street from my old roommate lives a neat couple who host summer and winter solstice parties, inviting the entire neighborhood to come celebrate.
We went to the winter solstice last December, and came back last Friday for the start of summer. The high point of each solstice is when the hostess passes out branches from her rosemary bush and everyone gets into a circle and leans in one direction or the other in the hopes of influencing the weather ever so slightly. (We leaned for snow in December).
Then everyone tosses their rosemary branch on the fire. It smells delicious. This time around, there was also a pair of musicians playing wonderful bluegrass music.
The building behind them is Jane's studio-- she's a great artist, and teaches neighborhood kids there as well as her own work.
Too bad I don't have more time for craftiness.... or sleeping. Or anything, really. But in a spare minute or two, I did get my craft on and made a gardening apron:
I figured it was time to bust out the rick rack (because how often do you get to bust out the rick rack?)
In the meantime, I was able to harvest the first bits of edibles this morning-- radishes!
UPDATE: Holy moly-- we had one at dinner and these are the HOTTEST RADISHES EVER. Mouth on FIRE. Maybe I can make wasabi.....
Oh, and an annoyance. In the form of Verizon. Because, yet again, we had no internets for four days. Not just the regular hour or two hour drops in service (for which I can not get Verizon to compensate us, or fix), but four straight days, no service. At all. *sigh*
Okay, so when I complained about the bunnies who live in the neighbor's trees and eat all of my herbs, one of the solutions I'd imagined for it was not that I should walk out onto the back deck to inspect the herbivore damage to my herbs at 5:30 in the am just in time to see a pair of feral dogs rip bunny apart. They chased him round and round neighbor's house, he slammed himself into the chain link fence in an effort to escape three times, and was caught by the larger of the feral dogs, who looks to be half lab half pit bull and wears a collar. Poor, poor bunny. I yelled at the dogs and threw things at them, but they paid me no mind at all. Soon, they'd hauled bunny off, and a few minutes later I heard what sounded like the two dogs fighting each other (one would imagine over who got to eat bunny) on the other side of neighbor's house. Not a good start to the day. Actually, I'm still pretty traumatized... poor, poor bunny. P pointed out that if we were in Arizona, it would have been a coyote, that it's the natural way of things. But if it were a coyote I think I'd feel less bad about it, because it would be the natural way of things. But feral dogs (and P's spotted the same dogs running wild around the 'hood numerous times, and they were out there yesterday morning chasing squirrels that got away for having climbing abilities) aren't the natural way-- they are the result of human irresponsibility. When I called animal control about them and mentioned the collar on one of them she asked if I'd looked at the collar to see who owned them... uhm... let me think about this.... did I approach a pit bull I don't know other than as the beast I saw savage a rabbit ten feet from my back door to see what his collar says? That would be a no.
And, that said, over the last two days something still ate what remained of my cilantro. All of it.
Shortly after the sad passing of bunny I headed north to Arlington, first for breakfast pho with friends Mean Louise, Fish Innards, and Tracy Lee. There should just be more breakfast pho.
Breakfast Pho was followed by some hanging out and then I went to a event shoot for a client. An outdoor event. On a day when it was 100 degrees. Oh well. Event went well, and the main thing was a concert by Everclear. They put on a good show, heat be damned.
And ended with singer Art Alexakis riding around on the Arlington County promo guy's segway:
And if you're in Richmond, come down to the glavekocen gallery for the show that's up now, including a couple of pieces by yours truly :)
I have a couple of pieces in a show that opens tomorrow, June 6th, at the GlaveKocen Gallery here in Richmond. So if you're in the area, come on down and check it out! It's work specific to the show, and very different from the stuff I usually do... but it's been interesting working on it, and I may do more in that vein.
My parents came to visit for about thirty seconds last weekend, bringing some long lost stuff, including a dining room table that I've owned for more than a decade but hasn't made it out of the box, despite having moved to at least three states. It's still in the box, but in my dining room instead of my parents' basement, which I know delights them to no end. There was a whole lot of other stuff as well, none of which has made it out of its respective carrier.
Meanwhile, I went out to water the garden this morning before leaving for work and discovered a cornucopia, nay, a veritable menagerie of animals attempting to feast on my garden. Squirrels. Rabbits. Birds. At the suggestion of a farmer friend I'd recently covered much of my container garden with bird netting (though something still chomped down on the last of the thyme, resulting in the death of the last of the stuff I'd tried to grow. Three packs of thyme seeds and zero yield, though some animal has a belly full of herbs). P covered the main garden with the same netting last week after seeing one of the family of bunnies poking around. (I see those damned rabbits every day. EVERY DAY. They are ravenous little bastards). When I made it out to the garden this morning I found that one of the black birds wasn't flying away. Why? Because the nasty little bugger had gotten UNDER the bird netting and was trapped inside the garden, flapping violently at all my cucumbers, including the fragile little transplants. DANG. It took some doing, but I got him out. That said, sheesh, how many animals could be attacking my garden all at once?? I may never get the chance to eat anything out of it. I live in a city that is in the top 100 largest cities in America.... I know it isn't like I'm back in Brooklyn, but jeeeeez, I hadn't thought that wildlife would be quite this much of a problem. But we've got squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits (lots of rabbits), all manner of birds.... and they will not be deterred....
We went to a farm party at the lovely home of friends and providers of our produce-- the Collins clan at Victory Farms-- last weekend. (We're CSA members). It was great to see them, and great to see the field where the zucchini I'm putting in tomorrow's lasagna came from. Of course, we were wildly jealous of the spread...
P and I drove madly to get up to D.C. for artists' night at Artomatic.
There's heaps and heaps of stuff going on, beyond the thousand artists whose work was hanging-- a film room with movies playing constantly, a poetry lounge where I could hear people reading their work, bands playing non-stop, an education room with lectures and workshops.... even a tattoo parlor across the floor from my space:
Among those I got to see, briefly, while we were up there was my dear friend Mas, whom I miss terribly. I had spoken to her on the phone a little while ago, and was lamenting the loss of my herb garden to heavy rains, saying that in a few weeks I should drive around the neighborhood looking for where my basil and oregano landed. So she came to see the exhibition-- with a bag full of seeds so that I could replant:
In other news, P is getting very close to completing the darkroom. He's so handy!
So busy, as usual, and being washed out... as usual. All it does is rain and rain and rain. After several years of drought, we're waaaay above average for rainfall. Every time I put a seed in dirt, the deluge comes. Herb garden, gone, washed downhill. Many of the containers were flooded over the rims. So I planted herb garden 2.0 yesterday... which, of course, means that it's raining today. Le sigh. P put up the laundry line and I managed to wash and dry exactly two loads of laundry before the rain came back. On the upside, the cucumbers did sprout.
Though, sadly, some birds have taken a shine to the watermelon sprouts and have eaten all but a couple of them :(
The cukes don't look too bad.... so far.
When not dealing with the rain, we have the neighbor beasts to contend with. They haven't jumped the fence or anything, but they bark and bark and bark. At everything. That moves. Squirrels. Rabbits. Birds. Us. It is soooooo annoying. Worst of all, whenever a fire truck goes by (and we live not too far, and certainly within hearing distance of, a major thoroughfare, so this is a regular, every night, sort of occurrence), they hooooowl and howl and howl.
And they are NEVER brought inside. Rain or shine, cold or heat. You can't really see it here, but they are both dreadlocked.
And not so sure about it. I mean, where I grew up, things like this did not happen. (Not one at a time, not in groups of seven.) And just 25 miles away. There was a tornado warning in the county where our house is yesterday (it didn't get to the county, but hung a right further south and headed for the water). Still, we've been dealing with the deluge for the last few weeks, and I'm now up to multiple washing away everything I planted incidents, including yesterday when there was such heavy rain it flooded out all of my pots and washed the seeds away.
SIGH.
Meanwhile, we have tax assessments that defy logic to look forward to here in lovely Virginia. Though there are, occasionally, things that one might find endearing about this place. Maybe not enough to counterbalance the illogical tax assessments, but enough to making hanging on for a few possible....
Finally planted something in the garden yesterday. I don't have super high hopes, as I usually am the angel of death when it comes to plants, but I have my fingers crossed that something will sprout. Of course, if anything sprouts, it may then get eaten by one of the bazillions of squirrels or the wild rabbits (including the giant one that I believe is a feral Flemmish Giant), but I'm trying to take one step at a time.
I seem to have gotten the stuff in the ground just in time-- we've got thunder, lightening, and a whole lotta rain going on out there this morning. Guess that's it for the gardening this weekend. On the, ahem, "upside," there is enough stuff to do indoors to keep me busy for ten years, so whatevs. I hope it's sunny next weekend, though, cause I gots to plant the rest of the seeds if they're going to have enough growing season to grow. In the meantime, I'm going to watch the rain falling on the purdy dogwood that is in full bloom on the side of the house. It's about the only thing looking nice that was here when we arrived (our predecessor was not, it appears, much of a green thumb).
While the transition from city livin' to suburban life is a bit of a transition (try as I might, I can't find a way to ride my bicycle to work... everything involves highways and major roads... these Richmonders are not so bicycle-friendly.... there aren't any bike paths to be seen :( which is kind of depressing), it's good to know that there are some familiar practices in place. Mayoring style, for example. I give you the style of Richmond's Mayor Wilder. Should be an easy transition from life in the District.
Overworked, mostly. I think I put that in the description of this blog. Or maybe of my flickr account. Or whatever. I say this now, but the sad fact is that the word could have easily been used to describe me when I was sixteen, had three jobs and was, you know, in high school "full time." I used to laugh uproariously at the skit on In Living Color where the West Indian dude would go off on someone for only have "tree jobs" when he, West Indian fellow, had seven jobs. Briefly, I wondered if I were West Indian (you know, until I caught site of myself and remembered that I'm so pale I glow in the dark).
With age comes maturity. Which mainly means that rather than picking up hourly wage labor, I now have, ahem, "projects." I have one official job, and about three hundred "projects," some of which are sometimes referred to as "gigs."
I had a gig last weekend, in fact, so that instead of planting that garden (which is probably okay as it's meant to frost here tonight) or unpacking something useful (or, you know, paying my bills), I was in Arlington shooting pictures. Which, in most ways, is just fine, since I like to shoot pictures, and I like the people who asked me to shoot the pictures. I like the shooting (despite the bad weather that has made for flat lighting). It's the no-time-must-post-process
thing that is currently wrecking havoc. Most of the havoc is caused by my old, slow, and full computer. That combination means that I am still adjusting curves on files at 10 pm when I'd hoped to be done hours ago. Days ago. I've ordered a new computer in the hopes of fixing this problem...I sure hope it works!
In the meantime, I have a couple of pictures from the weekend:
I'm not sure that the leap made me think of it, but she did have pretty awesome hair.
In other news, I went out to jump in the car (not mine, mind you, as poor P has to drive faaaaar to work, and has been taking my better mileage getting leeeetle car to work... which means I'm driving his jeep, which just isn't my size, to work), and saw one of the few tulips our predecessors had planted, lying, perfect, yellow and beautiful, on the ground.... and couldn't figure out what the hell. A similar fate befell another tulip two days ago. Yesterday, P spotted the culprit:
