Strawberries and Broccoli!

So because apparently I can't even go into the grocery store without buying plants, we now have two strawberry plants, a lemon balm, and another Italian parsley. As you can see from the picture, we already have berries, so if we can keep the plant alive and squirrel free we should have fruit in a month or so. Kellie pointed out that the broccoli has a a couple of baby florets, so we actually have crops already starting!

A cumin seedling sprouted up as well, the morning glories are still growing like crazy and the tomato still looks good. The watermelon are suffering, I think they got a little dried out the other day but hopefully they'll pull through. I found a piece of a robin's egg in the broccoli I have no idea where it came from we don't have any nests near by (at least none I could see)

As you can see from some of the photos I also bought a bunch of chili flakes and I put them everywhere, nothing was eaten last night so fingers crossed this will keep the squirrels away. I think I have figured out the solution to keeping the plants in the sun without them falling off the deck as well.
I am going to get long planters and tie them to the deck rails and when the time comes to pot the watermelon and tomatoes into bigger pots they will go in the corners and be tied to the roof supports.

My whole blog isn't going to be all gardening but it will be a large portion of it especially during the growing season, it's my favorite thing to do in the whole world and if everything pans out the way I hope, I'll be making a career of it someday.

Garden Update

Nooooooooo!

Well the repellent didn't do much, the lavender was assaulted again and the verbena is almost eaten up and we lost two more watermelons. The chives weren't touched again (though I wonder if that was the squirrels they purportedly don't like onions)and I am wondering if the safety of the remaining watermelons is down to their position, ie they are hard for the squirrels to get at which means I might move some stuff around. If this keeps up I might no choice put to get some netting. Although doing a bit of research it says castor oil, black pepper, alliums, and marigolds can all deter squirrels as well. I could try smearing garlic all over the place that might help. Ah it looks like red pepper flakes are supposed to work really well so I know what I am getting at the grocery store tonight...cheap, eco friendly, and effective, win!

Now the good news is the morning glories are going gangbusters! I planted them in two stages so the newest ones aren't up yet, but the ones I photographed yesterday? Look at them now, that's a proper plant! I always heard morning glories were hard to sprout, these certainly don't seem that difficult at all, and in the wild they self seed very easily. I'm expecting some of the others to pop up by the time I get home from work tonight.

Not much to see here yet

The last thing I did was plant some temple orange seeds I got from eating some temple oranges, which are a tangerine/orange hybrid. They have a nice flavor which almost reminds me of grapefruit but sweeter. I am probably going to move them inside next to the seed starter on my windowsill but i need a water catchment tray to put under them first.  I honestly doubt I'll get any fruit off of them, this is just to see if I can get them to grow. My avocados did reasonably well despite being to leggy until the cats murdered them, the next time I eat an avocado I'll probably stick the seed in a glass of water and wait for the roots to appear.

Look at these babies it's amazing!

Someday when I am a famous and successful gardener I will have greenhouses devoted to exotics like citrus and avocados (maybe even coconuts!) But first I must defeat the squirrels!

The Garden Begins

Adam and Sons aka my new crackhouse

So now that I have some outdoor space to make a garden, a garden is being made. My roommate Kellie got some plants from work and her and I headed to our neighborhood garden center Adam and Sons to buy more plants and supplies. I already know this is going to be a dangerous place for me as I have already spent obscene (for me) amounts of money here! The only thing that stops me from buying *ALL THE PLANTS* is space and sun constraints (that and that whole pesky rent and food thing), I was tempted by roses, clematis, gardenias, basil, thyme, hot peppers, a ton of veg....things I didn't even know what they were but I knew I wanted! I know I will probably add some of the herbs to the garden at least but I want to see how the things we have are going to get on, we have already had a few problems which I will get into in a minute.

pre-squirrel garden

To start us off Kellie brought home broccoli, cauliflower, lavender, red sorrel, Brussels sprouts, chives, lemon verbena, French tarragon, fennel, Italian parsley, dill, and cucumbers. The dill and the cucumbers were both in bad shape when she brought them home and we lost the cukes and I'm pretty sure the dill has had it as well but everything else survived. At the garden center we picked up Sangria watermelons and a Brandywine Red heirloom tomato, they are Amish, date back to 1865 and are said to be the world best tasting tomato (We'll see.)

greenhouse seed starter

 I also bought a seed starter kit with a greenhouse top and some cumin, cilantro, jalapeno, and morning glory seeds. Most of the garden will be veg and herbs but I wanted to throw in some flowers and when I saw the Picotee Blue morning glories I knew those were the flowers I wanted. I was advised to nick the morning glory seeds and soaked them over night, and I am glad I did because they sprouted in the water and have actually started to poke above the soil! When the plants are big enough I plan to give a few to the guncles for their garden.

baby morning glories

So everything was going tickety boo until I went outside this morning and found disaster had struck! The parsley was a few green nubs where the leaves used to be, the lavender and chives looked chewed on and one of the watermelons was missing! As Matthew my other roommate had predicted, the squirrels found our garden and helped themselves! Well I couldn't let this go on so I headed back to the garden center to see what my options were. I was thinking netting but I found a natural repellent so hopefully that will do the trick, I don't want to get all Mr McGregor on their asses ;) And of course while I was there I needed to pick up some mint for my mojito flavored infused water. So I get to the mint section and I can't decide which mint I want, so I buy four of them, chocolate, apple, pineapple, and peppermint. I put them all in one pot that I am calling my mint garden.

Mint garden with four types of mint

I thought mint likes shade but all of them said partial to full sun so I hope they get enough sun on the deck. That's the other problem I think we will run into, lack of sun. I know they get quite a bit of morning sun, provided they are on the deck railings or the window boxes a former resident left behind, but I'm worried it won't be enough. The plants on the northeast side of the deck get some afternoon sun so I might migrate the whole lot to that side, my next step is to get those window box holder things that go on deck railings and then set the pots into that until they all need to be repotted. Not sure what I will do when they get bigger though, I'm already imagining rigging them up to hang down from the roof  and maybe tie the bigger ones onto the deck rail like some sort of horticultural shibari. It's all sort of an experiment, any failures will just be lessons learned, but it would be nice to get a crop of something for our efforts!

 

Science? Or marketing BS?

my soap and bath bombs

So we sell this product and a few others like it at work, it's a Scientific Explorer Spa "Science" Kit (the quotes around science are mine.) Now I'm a bit conflicted with this, on one hand it's perhaps a way to interest girls in science and chemistry by having them make something they enjoy. On the other it reinforces the idea that if a girl is going to interested in science, it better be the science of making her pretty, because that's really what matters. Now don't get me wrong, you all know I love making stuff like this, recently Jen, Colleen, Jack and I all made our own cold process soap, bath fizzies (which I left in the plastic bag instead of taking them out to finish drying so they all expanded and stuck together which is why they look like blobs, they still work though), and body butters. I bought a bunch of fragrance oils and I made different scents, I love this stuff. But I'm not sure that these kinds of kits are really about science or girls learning science. I even opened one at work to see if there was any actual science inside, and there was, a bit. In the instructional booklet there is a paragraph about how the olfactory system works, not too bad, and a survey the child can fill out about of how the scents affected them, (basically aromatherapy) which is an experiment I guess but seems a bit iffy scientifically to me. Mostly the text went on about yummy smells, pampering, that sort of thing. I read some reviews on amazon and it seems I'm not alone in feeling these toys are in fact sending the wrong message. Most of the other science kits are fairly gender neutral and usually have both a boy and a girl on them doing science-y things, only one bothers me though, it's a chemistry set and the boy on the front is looking into a microscope at a bug (that's sounds like biology not chemistry but whatever) but the girl is looking at some sparkly rainbow pinwheel thing and the caption near her says "It's chemistry! Make beautiful ornaments!" While his caption says "Perform tons of activities and experiments!" Hmmm... Now I don't have any kids but what do you all think about this? Gender bias and weasel marketing or no big deal?

The other product that really bothers me is this Plaid iron on transfer for babies. It reads "Does this diaper make my butt look big?" Really? I mean I realize the babies can't read the damn thing but what disturbs me is that people think it's cute and funny. I don't think is either of these things, is anyone else as disturbed by this kind of thing as I am?

I'm sooo changeable!

I changed my mind on the whole 365 thing, I take photos of things when I think they need to be photographed, trying to take a photo of anything just to make sure I get a photo for the day seems counterproductive. It's not really laziness anyone who knows me knows when I find something to photograph, it gets Photographed. Besides, I want my blog to be more than crappy photos...

Project365

Project365 , a set on Flickr.

So I am attempting to do Project 365 again, hopefully I will have better luck with a decent camera phone and a newly upgraded Flickr account, than I did last time. I take enough pictures randomly almost every day that this should be a no brainer. We'll see ;) I think I will post a link to my P365 Flickr set maybe once or twice a week, this way my whole blog won't be all pictures all the time.

A fairly important revelation

So after a lot of soul searching, deep thinking, having angry debates with myself, and late night theological discussions with a few trusted friends I have come to a realization:

 I'm not a theist anymore.

I know now that this has been brewing for a while but my mind was rebelling against the idea for a long time, and trying to quell the increasing cognitive dissonance I was experiencing (which was surprisingly very stressful) made me a bit techy on the whole subject so I would shove it away and try not to think about it. Which makes sense really, it's difficult to discard a 20 year old worldview! At first, the thought of no gods made me feel a bit ill and lost and almost panicky in a weird way, but slowly the idea grew a bit and started to make sense. The process was gradual but I think inevitable.

I’ve never really felt the presence of the gods and for a while I thought it was just a matter of finding the right pantheon or something. I admit I’ve never been a very good polytheist, because even though I never disbelieved in them, I wasn’t about to put up with any shitty behavior from any deity either. My rule was the same one I have for pets; if a human can’t get away with it neither can you, and I maintained that if the deity didn’t like it they could sod off and I told them so frequently. But then I realized I wasn’t getting any type of behavior from them, no reaction whatsoever, no cosmic smackdown, no signs or portents, but also no positive changes in my life I could ascribe to the sacrifices and prayers I was offering either.

So naturally I thought it was me, oh everybody else has these deep meaningful relationships with all sort of deities and here I am with nothing maybe I’m not trying hard enough, I don’t give them enough stuff, time, energy, maybe I’m not pious enough.....

Or maybe, a small voice whispered in my mind, they don’t respond because they simply aren’t there. For once this idea didn't send me into panicky irrational anger and I actually thought about it. The few times I thought I had gotten some sort of a sign from a god could be easily explained by coincidence and pareidolia. And the one thing that has always bothered me, if there were gods why didn’t they do more to make themselves known and have more influence in the world, and I mean real, measurable, and objective influence? What was their purpose and why should I bother with them if they didn’t actually do anything? I never assumed they were a sort of cosmic vending machine that just gave you things on demand but I was doing my part, rituals and offerings and got....radio silence. Perhaps, the voice continued, you should put all that time and energy into people and things that need it here and not waste it on invisible sky people and constantly making yourself unhappy looking for something that isn’t there? And as irreverent and blunt as the voice had been, instead of feeling ill and lost I feel like great weight had been lifted off of me and a sense of peace replaced it and I knew in that moment that this was the right thing. If you will pardon me quoting myself here “It's amazing how beautiful the world looks when you stop looking for something that isn't there.” The war was over and my brain stopped trying to split itself in half. If anything I felt a greater sense of awe and numinousness looking at the night sky and the trees and in the feeling of the wind on my cheek because these things were now complete in themselves without any expectations of something I was missing that would somehow make them “better” or “more.” Which is why I still feel the wilds are still numinous to me and I will continue to wander them as always but with a renewed sense of appreciation and a very different perspective.

Now what this means in regards to my paganism remains to be seen. I still have a deep love of nature and can still fit the circle of the year into celebrating the turning of the seasons and how they impact our lives, but aside from that I’m not sure there is anything left for me there. I’m not really interested in the paranormal anymore, I stopped believing in astrology and magick a while back so no loss there, I don’t really even feel like interpreting the gods as archetypes or metaphors, the way many naturalistic or humanistic pagans seem to, I don’t see the point of it to be honest. I will still honor the dead but at this point I am pretty sure it’s their memory I’m honoring and keeping alive rather than having them visit from some afterlife, but that’s not a point I’m going to stress too much over. I still love my Grove but I am unsure exactly how I still fit into it at least theologically (well theologically I don't) but I suppose that will be something to be discussed. That is really the only part of this that really bothers me, that is the loss I will feel most keenly. But everything changes and who knows what the future may bring?