The Filigreed Key

The wind blew sand over my eyelids as I slept, tickling me gently and rousing me from my slumber. Before I could think twice, I opened my eyes and let a dusting of fine grains seek the crevices beneath my lids. My hands raced to my face, my voice suddenly a hoarse cry. As suddenly as it had started, the irritation was gone, slight traces of tears meandering down my cheeks through my week-old whiskers and my vision returned.

OK, I probably wasn't sleeping in THIS canyon...

The sun was still rising, a pale glimmer above the canyon wall. It was time to wake. It was time to drink from the cold stream, while the water was still fresh and before the sun withered it into dust. It was time to check the traps for a fresh hare, and to check my boots for scorpions; either would keep me alive for another day. Either would get me a step closer to the filigreed key.

The stream was chilled but full of silt. My teeth crunched through the grit when I had taken my fill and weighted my skins. My traps were empty, as were my boots. I still had a few bites of jerky to get me through the day, but then I would be on my own. I wouldn’t miss the taste of the old salted beef when I’d seen its yesterday; I definitely wouldn’t miss the way its fine strands managed to become lodged in my teeth for days at a time. I wouldn’t miss the way my mouth became dry and desert as the ground I’d slept on the night before. I would miss the cow, though.

Can You Hear Me Now?

“Hello? You still there?” Pete pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the display. It was dead.

“No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” Pete ripped through his bag, searching for the one thing that might make everything okay, but to no avail. The charging cable wasn’t there.

“Fuck!” he cried, drawing stares from several women walking their grocery carts across the street.

“There’s got to be one around here somewhere...” he murmured as he started up the street. Taquerias, Jewelry stores, restaurants; none of them had what he needed. He had to get her back on the line. He couldn’t leave things like that, not without knowing what she’d said.

He ran. Sweat poured down his arms, lubricating his hands. His phone slipped, for just a moment, tumbling through the air towards the sewers, but he caught it, just in the nick of time.

2 Years, 3 Months and 17 Days

In space, no-one can hear your lonely cries. They used to send teams up to counter-act the solitude, but they discovered there was a cheaper way to handle it. They gave us the Internet. Inadvertently, they gave us dating sites.

She’s lovely. I type into the chat box and pressed Send.

“Hey.”

“Hey back.”

Whoa, ‘Hey’ never works! Maybe she liked the picture of me skydiving... Maybe there’s something wrong with her.

“So... I kind of stink at this part.”

“What, chatting?”

“It’s not chatting, it’s the first chat. I never know what to say.”

Really. Never. I hate starting with some interest she mentioned because everyone does that. It never works for me. ‘Hey’ never works either, but it’s a lot less to type.

“You’re doing fine. I usually just look at the guy’s interests and find something to talk about. You work in photography?”

It must be different for women.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

                “You really want to know?”

                “Yes. Tell me.”

                “All right, then. I was on my way to work when I saw her. She was nice enough to look at, I guess, but a bit old. Older than me, at least. She was crossing the street and had one of those little hand-carts you see people using to drag their groceries behind them, but she didn’t have any groceries.”

                “What was in the hand-cart?”

                “If you let me finish, I’ll tell you.”

                “Sorry.”

                “As I was saying, she was crossing the street. She didn’t have groceries, though; she had puppies. Lots of puppies. I dare say dozens of puppies. No, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe just one dozen. Maybe a baker’s dozen. Does a baker’s dozen of puppies conjure up the wrong idea? Like ‘ten and twenty blackbirds, baker’s pie?’ I’m pretty sure these puppies were not intended for food, if that sets your mind at ease. Anyway. Puppies.

Garden 2010! A much-needed (?) update

Well, it's been about a month since my last update. I've gotten way busy with my other website venture (http://www.skunkkilledchicken.com) and almost forgot about this one.

So, a month later... this time I'll just try recapping everything and then toss the photos at the bottom. Just for a change in pace. And because I'm extra lazy today.

The tomatillos have almost all gone from flower to husk but they're still (very) slowly filling those husks in. Most of the fruit is still smaller than a cherry tomato. I've gotten several red tomatoes off the vine (probably 7-8 now) and perhaps two dozen yellow pears. The reds have slowly gotten their good flavoring (the earliest handful tasted gross) and the yellow pears are growing into it as well. So far, I haven't had anything from the garden that's FABULOUS, which makes me sad.

I harvested a lot of basil and we've had half a dozen pesto dinners from it. I still have a little basil left which will be harvested in the next couple of days for another (smaller) batch. It seems that my soil mixture was so awful in my herb garden that the turnips are all about two millimeters in diameter and my radishes are only slightly larger (but aren't good). My green onions have also been unable to flourish, leaving me solely with basil from those three boxes. When I pulled out the basil I replanted some green (and purple) bush beans that I didn't manage to get off the vine quickly enough -- they were too hard to comfortably eat but apparently great for replanting.

My bucket tomatoes are still green on the vine but boy are those vines huge! Several of them are several feet taller than I am (putting them at 7-8 feet). My blueberries have pretty well shriveled up this season. I imagine that part of this is due to not wintering well (I should have thrown some burlap over them) and part of it due to my irrigation system being broken for a month without my noticing. Our arborvitae are also struggling, but I think we'll be able to bring them back. I hope! My raspberry didn't fruit last year and hasn't fruited this year, but it has grown a rather long vine. My blackberry put out four or five long and thick canes from which I've picked about a dozen large, ripe, and the sweetest of berries. The only thing that I lament about the berry plants is that it will take an extremely long time before I can get multiple pints (or quarts) of fruit per season -- and to be honest, we probably won't be in this house when it happens.

I'm also very disappointed with my soaker hose in the garden: it doesn't have a problem with water pressure at the end but for whatever reason, most of the water is rolling off the hill away from the roots. This may be due to the soil mixture (which is similar to that in the herb garden) being poor. Next year....

Another day in my garden...

Well, I've backdated this one too. Why? Why backdate EVERY single entry in this blog? Well, I want the blog dates to match the dates the photos were taken. It's a lot easier to look back at the garden's progression that way. Also, I'm far too lazy to write the blog on the same day that I take the pictures. It just won't happen.

So, as you can see, my tomatillos have gotten quite a bit bigger and bushier. Each of the stalks has several forks which are approaching 5 feet long...I wasn't planning on putting up any sort of other stakes/ties, but I think I may have to do that now!

For all of the tomatoes, we ended up with a variation on the Florida weave. Every plant is staked up the center, then additional stakes were placed on either side and between the tomato plants so that the string could alternate between them. It looks something like this from above:

.* *

.x x

* * *

.x x

* * *

.x x

* * *

.x x

.* *

*=stake, x=tomato plant, .=spacer for this post (I'm html illiterate, what can I say)

So far it seems to be working out rather well. The plants are something like 6-7 feet tall and each branch has gotten heavy enough to lean on various intersections of string. Hopefully it will hold! Also, hopefully there's enough room for us to get in there and harvest! As of this time, there are only a few dozen tiny green tomatoes. I think we won't harvest until mid-August at this rate.

My peppers have all grown up quite a bit. Above is a view of the jalapenos. The tiny plant on the right is a weed that replaced my caterpillar-eaten serrano :( I think the tall plant second to the right is also a serrano.

Here is a view of my poblanos, starting to catch up to the jalapenos and serrano. With any luck, there will be chile rellenos aplenty in a month or two!

I have a shot of one of my bucket tomatoes. For the most part, they all look like this but it's hard to see in the photo (green leaves on green leaves) -- they're all really quite big, but because they're off on their own in a bucket I haven't been able to do the weave. I actually ended up taking some extra stakes and adding one to each bucket to give some additional support. Unfortunately, these bucket tomatoes are all mortage lifters and other LARGE tomatoes so it's going to be a headache keeping the plant from falling over!

Here's my herb garden. Apparently the sun came out since my last post; the basil is all in full swing and the turnips and radishes are doing a bit better. I don't think my radishes are ever going to live up to their 29-day cycle, but someday they might fatten up enough to eat. You can BARELY see the green onions behind the turnips in the second box; the boxes in this particular order have ended up shading the lower boxes. We'll have to fix that at the end of the season (the soil in the boxes is WAYYY too thick anyway, it needs to be mixed with some sand).

Garden 2010! (Part 2)

I'm back-posting this entry because...well, I'm lazy :(

Here are some photos from about 2 weeks after the last entry.

Here you can see that the tomatillos and tomatoes have grown up a bit (though not a lot); they've about doubled in size. The peppers haven't done much at all in these two weeks except get eaten by slugs. Along the left you can see some weeds sticking out where beans might be (again, slugs devoured the starter leaves).

My rose bush (from last year) has come up quite a lot; eventually it will have a nice trellis to climb, but for now it's just hanging out with some bamboo.

Here's a close shot of the tomatillos; you can see them slowly climb up the stakes; tomatoes are in the row immediately behind.

My orange-bucket tomatoes are slowly getting bigger too. Not bad for left-over seedlings :)