Elkit in Wonderland

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven Day Weekend

2009-11-13T11:16:54-08:00

Mine is not seven days long. But four ain't bad at all. I took today and Monday off, so I could bracket my weekend retreat nicely and stress-free. I'm cleaning up around the house and in the yard, and after lunch time, I'll take off for Santa Cruz, where I will spend the weekend a half dozen intrepid NaNoWriMo veterans. Rob found us a great house on Black's Beach, and we'll write and write and eat and drink and have a good time.

Don't let me forget to pack my Bundt pan, the flour sifter, and the zester. The Food Librarian declared Sunday Bundt Cake Day, and who am I to protest? There were several votes for the Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Lime Glaze, so that's what it'll be. It also meant that I could snatch limes from my neighbors' tree as I dropped off the winter seedlings on their patio table: purple kohlrabi, shelling peas, broccolini, and a cluster of spindly leeks that were tested and declared edible my Ms. Maia. Her thinking seemed to be that it looked close enough to cat grass. I may plant more leeks for her. Good on her for eating her veggies.

Random trivia tidbit: a Bundt cake in German is called a Guglhupf [Google-hoopf].

The Good Old Days

2009-11-02T00:02:00-08:00

Monday Music for you: Weird Al Yankovic and The Roots, Good Old Days. Found this because Weird Al twote it.

Ell Oh Ell Oh Lola

2009-11-01T19:49:36-08:00

I attended two Yale literature lectures today. They're from the course "The American Novel since 1945", and I watched two of them on the internet, thanks to Academic Earth.

I think I'll try to finish this course, and definitely check out the lectures about Cormac McCarthy (whom I still haven't read). Of all the novels the course covers, I have only read one. Hrmpf.

We Don't Need No (13/2009)

2009-10-31T22:35:00-07:00

Hadn't been to the movies in quite a while, and then I read the A.V. Club interview with Alfred Molina and remembered that Peter Sarsgaard was in this movie, and I didn't have any candy for trick or treaters, and running off to the movie theatre would be a good idea.

I liked it a lot - especially Peter Sarsgaard; he has that look of almost harmlessness, but you always wonder what's lurking under the surface -, and I kept thinking there was something familiar about it, until I finally remembered that I had read about this in The Guardian a few months back.

As usual, I couldn't possibly say it better than Roger Ebert.

Ashes To Ashes

2009-10-30T19:12:00-07:00

Tea bags. Egg shells. Veggie scraps. Potato peels. Paper receipts. Cat hair. Coffee grounds. Apple cores. Leftover noodles. Stale bread. Fallen leaves. Twigs. Egg cartons. Yellowing salad greens.

I Like Dirt I Like Dirt I Like Dirt

2009-10-26T00:02:00-07:00

Monday Music for you: Red Hot Chili Peppers and I Like Dirt, from a Rockpalast concert in Germany. I know they're not singing about gardening, but this is what I hum when I dig around in the back yard.

I Sleep All Night, And I Work All Day

2009-10-24T15:20:36-07:00

Here's what I did this week:

worked
ate lots of snacks
worked more
watched loads and loads of Monty Python programming on IFC, which is why I keep singing the Lumberjack Song
slept very well

And this weekend is mostly spent in the backyard, with brief excursions online to blog, pay bills, and tend my virtual farms in Farmtown and Farmville. I did my gardening math homework, made a shopping list and went to the farm and feed store, where I bought such lovely items as

worm poop
blood meal
bone meal
Sustane organic fertilizer
diatomaceous earth (took me a minute to type that correctly)
humate soil conditioner, to loosen the brick factory clay that is my backyard
and six huge bags of compost

Came back home with all these goodies, and set my seedlings out into the wonderful October sunshine. Reseeded the dead spots in the lawn, broke down the summer veggies' raised bed, and picked a bucket of apples. Left to do today and tomorrow: set up a new raised bed with all the freshly purchased goodies, transplant the seedlings from the seed tray into their own pots, and add compost and fertilizer to the strips of dirt in front of the house, all the while thoroughly ruining what's left of my manicure.

Not Just Anybody

2009-10-19T00:02:00-07:00

Monday Music for you: The Beatles and Help!

Must You Throw Dirt In My Face

2009-10-18T17:31:38-07:00

Slightly dirty and very productive weekend - my favorite domestic goddess Finny came over for a tomato/citrus trade (her tomatoes for my lemons and Holly's limes) and threw dirt, not in my face, but in my bucket, and walked me through testing the soil in my backyard, so that I can grow better veggies.

I'd bought one of these soil test kits at OSH, and we made a mud solution - 1 cup soil, 5 cups water, and ran the tests for the pH value (acidity) and the NPK values (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) of the soil. Turns out my backyard soil is nitrogen deficient, potassium deficient, has adequate to sufficient phosphorus, and is just right on the pH side around 6.5.

I'd expected everything to be abysmal, so the phosphorus and pH values were a pleasant surprise.

Now the next steps are to calculate what I need in amendments, to buy those, add them, and work them into the soil before I plant the winter veg seedlings I sowed after the class I took.

I Feel Like Letting My Freak Flag Fly

2009-10-17T10:51:35-07:00

In the shower this morning, shampooing my golden tresses, I appropriated a fine CSNY song for my nefarious purposes and sang:

"Almost ... washed ... my hair ... it happened just the other day. It was gettin' ... kinda skank', I coulda said it was in my way. But ... I didn't ... and I wonder why ... I feel like ... lettin' my freak flag fly ... yes, I feel ... like I owe it ... to someone."

But I *did* wash my hair, and I like being truthful, so I stopped. Oh, and my poetrying skills aren't that grand either. (As if you couldn't already tell.)

But I'm not giving in an inch to fear ... yes, I promised myself this year ... I feel like I owe it ... to someone.