Dandelyon's Worlds

It's cold and grey outside. The peas, spinach, turnips, and beets we planted last week have not sprouted yet, which is doubtless a blessing, since it's supposed to drop below freezing tonight. But those are all cold-weather crops, so they'll be ok.

The warm weather crops that I've planted so far are all safe inside, though some of the tomatoes are very badly in need of thinning, and I don't really have things set up for that. My old flats are also getting really fragile, so I'll have to obtain some newer ones.

I'm feeling really frazzled right now. I know that's because of doing taxes. I have senseless anxiety about that, and it isn't as simple as it ought to be. Tax laws are truly unnecessarily complex and written in confusing jargon, and since that person appointed a new head of the post office, I never get all the forms I need in the mail and always have to spend time chasing them down on the internet or by phone. And the increasing trend of identity theft means that not only do I have to cudgel my dyscalculic brain to focus enough to copy a zillion numbers accurately from forms and my records into the depths of the online program I use, I also have to cudgel my brain to remember the last five digits of my social (which is stupidly hard), and copy numbers from third party authentication notices.

On top of that, when I had questions, I had to sit and wait and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for calls back from the experts on call, and some of the experts were just as frustrating as the numbers. The women ranged from OK to good; the men from bad to horrible this year. (Yes, I know you are trying to help me, but you are telling me to enter a lie in order to get rid of this error message the program is giving me, and I know better to lie about whether I stopped using a particular car last year...) (And then there was the guy who hung up on me when he didn't want to bother to answer my question.) Ugh.

And now it's done, and I feel like I should be able to just sigh in relief and move on, but my brain feels like a wet noodle and my back and neck are still all stress-knotted. Some of this is just stupid anxiety stuff, some is being tired from the forced focus needed to enter so many numbers accurately, but a lot is just an unwanted reminder that the stupid long covid isn't gone. And that feeds my anxiety--did I do something in the on-again off-again, tired, long-covid brain-fog that wasn't correct, and might I have failed to catch it when I reviewed everything?--which won't help me to recover and get on to recording some music or writing new songs or even maybe new fiction.

It's a lot more fun to consider my gardening plans. And gardening, while it requires simple actions on my part, really doesn't require much ability to think.

I don't mind tasks that don't require thinking, but many things that require thinking are a lot more fun, and I really mind not feeling up to doing those fun things!

Got woken up this morning to learn that My Angel's PT was out sick today. (Someone recommended a PT that specializes in helping people with balance issues caused by eye problems, and the lady is fantastic.) I got the receptionist to schedule a replacement appointment and put it on the calendar. Then, since I forgot to do it yesterday, now that my new health insurance card has arrived, I called to order new CPAP supplies and cleaned the ones I currently have. Naturally, by that time I was quite emphatically awake.

I did a bunch of unexciting little things, figuring that when My Angel got up we could go out and make a new archway for the entrance of the garden. The old one, constructed mostly of saplings we cut down and wild grape vine (and wire) had lost structural integrity last autumn, due to age, wind, and My Angel falling against it. I'd pinned it to the tomato cages to keep it from falling on the car over the winter, and took it down before the big wind storm a couple of weeks ago.

By the time she was awake and almost ready to do stuff, it wasn't quite too cold for the planned work, and I'd moved the car to give me a place on the ground to build the arch, and had just gotten started pulling stored saplings out to assess which one would work best without additional cutting when she told me she would be talking funny for a bit. What? What are you talking about? Her temporary crown came off. So in I went to have her call her student dentist, who said it was too late to get her in today and sent her off to the pharmacy to buy a "lost filling and loose cap repair" kit.

I consulted with her about the arch; the best sapling was taller than I'd hoped for, but I didn't want to get the axe out and cut it shorter, and My Angel is too tall for a short arch anyway. She headed off to the car and I decided to get the shovel and dig the post hole I'd need (one because one of the supports was still there from last year) and found the door was locked. Thankfully she hadn't driven off yet, or I'd have been locked out without my tools while she was gone!

So, door unlocked again, off she went to the pharmacy and I got to work on the arch alone. Sigh. That wasn't the plan! But I did ok, taking the wire archtop I'd made from an old piece of roof antenna and the sapling, some still-limber branches, some lengths of grape vine, and gardening wire, and made 3/4 of an arch on the ground, looping the metal sun-and-moon and butterfly decorations to it, wiring it all together, and then, with the bit of metal fence we'd put up earlier this spring next to the woodpile as a support, got it into place, wired to the metal fence on one side and to the support sapling that's still attached to the twine fence on the other side, and at least that bit is done.

I still have to pull down the bean and morning glory vining from the rest of the twine fence, and probably replace a couple of other supports. But first, tomorrow if the weather remains sunny, I want to get peas planted. And probably spinach. Hmm...I wonder if I could plant anything else this early. Cabbage maybe? Google says early to mid April, and we're near enough to the lake to be in a warmer planting zone than most of Milwaukee, so yes. Onion starts? Google says mid to late April, so no. Turnips? yes. Beets? Possibly. Carrots? No, wait until the threat of frost has passed, unless it's an "early variety". (But the seed packets I have say "as early as the soil can be worked". I'll trust the packets, since those instructions were written for the variety in the packets.

So, there's a bunch of things I can plant tomorrow! Probably more than I'll have time for.

By the time My Angel returned, it was windy and the sun was low enough to be behind the houses on the west side of the street, so it was quickly getting colder. We went inside, and I looked at the flats I'd planted with tomato seeds.

A couple of days before Equinox, I'd planted a flat with "volunteer" tomato seeds. Volunteer meaning I'd taken tomatoes from my garden that were starting to rot and smashed them on a dry pot of dirt and let them dry there (because I read that tomato seeds need to sit in spoiled tomato juice for a while to sprout well). Later, I needed the pots and dumped the contents into baggies, making it really hard to tell what was seeds and what was just dirt. So I just spread about a tablespoon of the mix onto each pot in the flat, covered it with seed starting mix, watered it, and put it on a heating pad and under a rectangular plastic "dome". These seeds will grow children of one or more of the tomatoes I'd planted, so things like Northern Lights, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, and other heirloom varieties, usually ones that are striped, yellow, green, or purple.

Then on Equinox, right before and after the "moment", I planted two more flats, one all tomatoes from seed packets, and one 1/3 tomatoes and 2/3 peppers (cayenne and sweet Italian peppers, mostly, some from seed packets and some from plants grown in the garden last year. Seedlings were already starting to show on the first flat at that point. Wow, that was fast!

Today, I found two tiny sprouts in the second flat, a Purple Russian (from a free thank-you packet sent by a company I'd ordered other stuff from) and one, well, I don't know. Apparently I was tired enough I forgot to label the last two tiny pots. Argh. There are no sprouts in the third flat yet. But in the first one, most of the pots had at least a dozen happy seedlings. I prepped a fourth flat (adding dirt to the 18 little pots), took out three of the most crowded pots, and filled the flat and four other small pots with 3 seedlings each, leaving three or four each in the original pots. All those babies (roughly 75) were from just two of the little 3" pots. The other one I returned still-crowded to the flat.

I've gotten really good at transplanting tomato seedlings, and three to a pot is too many, so even if I lose 1/3 of the transplants, unless there's some other problem with the babies, or I get sick enough to forget to water them, I'll have lots of tomato seedlings to give away. I plan to put a fan into my sprouting room this year, to hopefully get stronger stems and leaves; since I haven't done that before there may be a learning curve on doing that well; that's one possible source of losing some of the plants before outdoor-planting time.

We tried to glue the temporary crown to My Angel's tooth with the recommended product, with a lot less success than I had with the arch and the seedlings. The tooth is not bothering her, so she said she was done trying. I hope they can see her tomorrow to glue it back on properly, as I'm afraid the tooth might be fragile without the temp covering it. We'll see tomorrow, I guess. If nothing else, she has another appointment Friday.

And, I got distracted and didn't hit post. So, an update: I have the seeds that it would be ok to plant tomorrow in a plastic thingy for easy transport outside, and I should sort some papers or play some music. I'm not doing that until after I post this, so I'll just say see you soon. I'll try to take a pic of the arch to share tomorrow too.

I took the car back to the dealership because it was drifting to the right and because the tire pressure monitor light was on. I sat there for what seemed like a long time, but that was all right, they had a chair and table that I could set up my computer on and work on the first-pass edits to the cozy mystery.

After that I did some grocery shopping and still got home in time to do some gardening.

The first visitor does not get a photo--it does not deserve a photo, as it dropped "fertilizer" on my arm and new gardening glove before flying off. I wiped off what I could with some dandelion leaves then went in to wash both me and the gloves. Ugh.

The second visitor was a surprise. It came around the neighbor's garage from the alley and walked right up to within a couple of feet of me. I talked to it--I didn't want to surprise it. It walked up, looked at me, and left. Or maybe it was looking at the trash in the neighbor's driveway, to see if there was food to grab.



I live in the city; usually possums are much more shy. This one was waddling around in daylight, out in the open, and either not at all afraid of me or convinced the flimsy twine "fence" between us (designed to support peas and beans) was sufficient to protect it from me.

But at least it didn't bomb me with fertilizer!

I've been busy lately, on the house and finishing up the garden for the year.

In the spring, I took the poor, spindly tomato plants that survived the terrible cold of last winter and the neglect of me getting too sick to remember to water them in the spring, and planted them outside. Most of them survived, but barely. They never produced more tomatoes, and will go to a well-deserved final rest when the first hard frost hits in a few days.

On the other hand, the purple basil that self-seeded into my lawn, and which I relocated into the beds around the tomato plants did fine, growing lots of pretty (and tasty) purple leaves. They flowered and went to seed, and I did my best to knock the seeds away from the lawn when I harvested the leaves. I do enjoy the flowers, and may get outside tomorrow and claim them, but I very much enjoy having the self-seeded plants every year, so I left those parts to get as many mature seeds as possible.

Here is a picture of tomatoes harvested during the summer:



I got new tomato plants for the second floor porch, so I wasn't lacking in fresh tomatoes. Those are now in my spare room, though it's been a windy year, and the leaves that grew strong enough for high winds and direct sun have not, for the most part, done well inside even with the grow lights. That's nearly always an issue when you move tomatoes in or out; hopefully these will revive over time. If not, I'll have to plant new ones. But in the meantime, I have a couple of small ripe tomatoes in the refrigerator and almost a dozen ripening inside.

I also have purple basil going to seed inside, since I brought in a few plants last fall and they seeded into the pots they were in.

But the biggest surprise this year was the oregano. Friendly birds apparently dropped oregano seeds around the garden, and the winter didn't discourage the oregano at all. I had a huge harvest of oregano where I planted it and also several clumps in other places, including with the roses in the front yard. I had so much I gave away some to passing neighbors and took a whole grocery bag full to a local homeless shelter.





The oregano took over the plot it was in, almost completely crowding out the lemon balm and peppermint there. I clearly have work to do next spring. But for the meantime, the roses are covered with fall leaves to help keep them safe and secure over the winter, I have bags of chocolate mint, oregano, and other herbs drying inside, and I am grateful I do not have to rely on my garden to supply me with food through the whole winter.

I am also very glad I have space to grow fresh herbs and tomatoes, and hopefully more than that next year.

You can be too busy to think, distracted by grief and worry, dreams and plans, errands and chores, and more, and if you don't deprive them of basics like dirt and water and light, they do their thing:




These are some of the tomatoes that were on my upstairs front porch during the summer.  Yes, there's more than one variety; the colors actually are different, that's not just an artifact of taking pictures with a cell phone--though, on reflection, I also realize that the second picture's colors are affected by having a glowing grow light sitting there just barely out of the frame.  I turned off the grow light that's near the grouping of three.

This just goes to show that sometimes you have to rearrange things to achieve your goals.  Indoor tomato plants, actually bearing fruit.  I am pleased!

I'm working on rearranging other things in my life too; refinancing the mortgage, sorting through clothes (and other stuff) and designating some for donating and some for trash, trying to help the docs figure out how to get My Angel healthier, and more.  It's more and more clear to me that I need a writing/arting office, and I've known for some time that I need more time and space to be creative.  I think I will be able to make some big changes soon.  I hope.  Keep your fingers crossed for me while I work on making room and rearranging things.

In other news, the moon in the clouds was beautiful tonight. The pictures taken before I messed with the camera settings were stained pink by the color of my phone cover, but these two came out pretty well, I think:



Happy Full Moon, everyone!

So, I've been busy with general life stuff; trying to get My Angel's medical situation more stable, making sure we have diabetic-friendly kitty food, kicking a freeloader outs of my house (as gently as possible, because I promised, not because he deserved it), overtime at work, cleaning house (including cleaning up after the freeloader, who arranged to leave during My Angel's sleep hours and my work hours, thus making it impossible for me to insist he do things like clean the toilet he left literally black.)  He not only failed to do things he promised to do, he also did things like glue a bit of wood to my doorway without asking permission, which I missed until he had gone.  Sigh.

On the positive side, I didn't realize how much his ungrateful, disrespectful, and lazy presence was stressing me out until he was gone.  And he is gone.

But I haven't been around LJ (or even my Twitter chats) much.  Overtime is nice for the budget, but that's not enough to make up, in my emotional and creative life, for the time it takes.

The one who is now gone from my house was supposed to pick me up some potting soil so I could start seedlings early. About a month later, he came to me and said, "I think I found what you want." He never did actually bring any home, so the seedlings weren't started early; the cold wet late spring then meant that the tomatoes grew very slowly. I finally have one flower on the biggest plant; about half of them are now about the size I'd want to plant outside if it was late April or early May, and the rest are still seedlings. *sigh* I'm planting them in bigger pots, putting the biggest ones on the second floor porch outside, so I can bring them inside in the fall.

Here are some of them as they were a few months ago.  I'll have to take current pictures for you.



The person staying in what was, essentially, my guest room, was also supposed to do some things around the house since he wasn't able to pay rent. The first thing I asked was for him to sand the rough-plastered walls in the downstairs bathroom so we could paint and seal them so the shower could be used. That was, apparently, too hard for him, so now that he's gone (and his toothbrush and other stuff isn't there to collect plaster dust) I've been working on the walls most nights. I suppose I shouldn't have let his stuff keep me from working on my house, but I guess I kept hoping he'd decide it would be nice to have a fully-functioning bathroom near the room he was using, and do the work. It's not as if sanding walls is complex or mysterious, it just takes time and elbow grease. Spackle helps too (which, again, isn't exactly complex or mysterious, though it's a bit more of a skilled job than the sanding.

But now the bathroom is well on the way to being actually finished; my friend filkart gave me some moon-and-star theme bathroom accessories for Yule and I was hoping to find some matching bathroom fixtures (towel racks and the like). Sadly, my e-bay and Google searches today didn't yield anything that comes close to matching.  There is a wooden toilet paper holder; perhaps I'll paint it to match the theme.  But I don't know what I'll do for towel racks; the ones I have are green plastic, plain and serviceable and absolutely the wrong color.

Well, the latest bit of spackle is probably dry enough to sand; I can get a bit more work done today if I go do it.

But it's good to be back.

One of the nice things about this new computer is the bouncing bubbles screen saver. The virtual bubbles are see-through (in case you haven't seen this screen saver) so you can still see whatever was onscreen--even read it-- through the bubbles. It's relaxing and almost mesmerizing.

I do keep forgetting the clock doesn't update while the screen saver is on.

I never got a vegetable garden in this year, between wasting time on the garage and the many cold or wet days we had this spring. So I've been missing out on my fresh peas. However, my friend Ithiriel did get her garden in, and harvested too many peas for her and filkart  to eat today, so when they came over to do music, I was gifted with fresh peas.  Now I have snacks for tomorrow, assuming I don't forget they're in the 'fridge and leave for work without them. 

Oh--and My Angel made french toast out of the current loaf of safe-bread, which worked MUCH better than making a roast beef sandwich with it did.  The Sami's  bread was much better for that, but I'm all out of it and haven't figured out where to buy it if The Nutman isn't selling in my work building this week.  I can have the other half of the batch for breakfast--and thank goodness real maple syrup is safe food for me!!!

And best of all, my voice appears to have finally recovered from the reaction to the out-gassing new carpets in the hotel where Duckon was held.  Maybe my feet will soon stop being so swollen.

Overall, it's been a pretty good day.

This weekend:  Muse Fusion over at torn_world . 

And next week, in honor of the crowdfunding  community being in LJ's spotlight, I plan to do a card draw, and am contemplating whether I have something new and interesting to say about Busking in Cyberland. 

So if anyone wants to share comments or questions about online busking, comments on what you'd like to see me writing, or suggestions for what deck(s) to use in addition to Rai Kunabei's disks, please, feel free to share.

And if not--what's good in your life during this fine full moon?

I headed outside with recycling, to store it in the bin out there until the City picks it up, and stopped to eat some Mulberries from the tree. I heard two women complimenting our flowers and headed toward the sidewalk to say thank you.

One of the women had a whole bouquet--some day lilies, two Asian lilies - one complete with roots - and a rose. Upon seeing me, she said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

"I didn't mean to!"

As if the flowers had jumped into her hands of their own free will!

She was wrinkled and worn, with a piercing in her tongue. Heck if I know how old she was. But I scolded her like an eight-year-old. She reacted like an eight-year-old too.

I told her I paid money for those flowers. She said again that she didn't mean to. I told her of course she meant to. And then I accepted her apology, asked her not to do it again, and brought the flowers inside.

She said she wouldn't do it again. We'll see.

I'm still having trouble getting over "I didn't mean to" from a grown person.

In other news, the phone isn't saving pictures properly to my phone card; I don't know if the card was damaged when I downloaded pics from it recently or if the phone is continuing its slow disintegration.  I had to take this picture with My Angel's phone, which is why it's grainier than usual.  Oh, well, it's better than not having a camera available.

One of the things I love about dandelions is that they don't wait for permission to grow and be pretty.  Here's a picture of a dandelion I took a few weeks ago, growing with exuberance in the tiny crack where the alley behind my house meets up with the next house along the way.

And I don't think I bragged about it yet, but this is my newest icon by djinni .  Tod is awesome, the way he can draw so many, many icons in each batch and have them all come out  unique and attractive.

Of course, I love my roses too.  I have to spend some time taking pictures while they're at the height of their season, especially since that's now, not during Duckon, like in a normal year.  I'll try to do that tomorrow, instead of what I did today--get computers running normally again (this computer decided to stop noticing the touchpad; the old one that My Angel's been using for games stopped recognizing the keyboard.  That issue resolved when I turned it off and let the updates install; mine I had to call for help to get resolved.  Then (as if that wasn't enough chores for the day) I paid some  bills and did the *delightful* (ahem) adding and subtracting in the checkbook so I know how much money I'll have when the bill payments clear.  (Never mind that the next paycheck will be deposited before all of them clear, and I don't have that added in yet because I don't know exactly what it will be yet!  Let me feel accomplished!)

I've been thinking about finishing Feeding the Hungry, or perhaps writing the sequel, with a different name, and I've also been thinking about how to structure Fireborn to turn it into a finished novel.  Dang that Dragon-boy for insisting on being a viewpoint character--and a good addition besides.  It makes the story all lopsided as it is. 

Oh, well, no one ever promised that the fun stuff would be easy.

Come to think of it, the easy stuff gets boring awfully quickly...

So, tomorrow's goals--get some writing done, photograph roses, and blog about them too!

I'd love to see you there. Or here. What excites you in a story?



Perhaps, this weekend, I'll be Muse Fusioning outside with all the flowers--the roses are finally blooming, and here are some of the last of the irises!