Juneuary's back! But it's okay!
Jul. 12th, 2010 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
It's currently 60°F and rainy, and I'm wearing a tank top, skirt, and flip flops, but I'm not even going to bitch. After hitting the 90s in the last few days, I've decided that this is better. I mean, if it has to be one extreme or another, I prefer this. But what I would love even better is a normal Seattle summer, where it's just gorgeous and perfect for 3 months. The good news is, it looks like after today, that's exactly what we'll be getting for the next 10 days -- 70-75°F the whole time. Squeee!
My vegetable garden is soldiering on, even though they're all like WTF from this insane weather that has a 30° difference from day to day (much as we all are). A few more little tomatoes are peeking out, and I saw a little bee near the tomato flowers yesterday. Pollinate your heart out, little bee! I've started to pinch my basil plants, but my lesson learned from this year is that I need way more basil. Pinching a few at a time doesn't really give me enough to work with, it's not enough for pesto, and once pinched, it doesn't keep well. With more plants, every time I pinch I should have enough to make pesto, at least. The carrots are getting super crazy leafy, except when I dug down to check on the carrots themselves, they're PUNY. I guess my soil isn't loose enough for them. Seriously, the leaves give the impression that they must be huge; they're just making a whole lot of noise over nothing. The birds keep getting to my strawberries before I do. They think the netting is a joke and are laughing at me behind my back. The garlic leaves seem to be dying down, but not as much as K.'s; it'll be awhile before they're ready to harvest. The little zucchini plant is doing well, it's now surpassed its predecessor, but it's not big enough to develop flowers yet. I bought a little jalapeno pepper starter, and it's insanely greedy for water. If I don't water it daily, it droops. O.o Finally, after a second bout with the neighborhood cat, I've moved the catnip indoors to my office, which door I am keeping closed so Jaime doesn't wreck what's left of the poor thing. I don't know if it will fare well inside, and if it doesn't I guess I'll move it back out and just hope that the darn neighborhood cat doesn't succeed in killing it entirely.
I have like four or five story outlines going right now. This is exciting because it's been awhile since I've had that many story ideas clamoring to be written. The difficulty is in concentrating on one of them; I'm not good at multi-tasking when it comes to writing. If I try to write two stories at once, they both suffer. I just need to let one of them take over. Unfortunately, the one that's calling out the strongest right now is also the one I don't have all the answers for, plot/story wise, so I can't start writing until I have all the answers, that's just how I work.
C.'s 5th birthday party on Friday was fun, though dealing with little kids -- even peripherally -- exhausts me. The Molly Moon's truck gave out ENORMOUS scoops of ice cream, HOL-EE. In pictures the scoops are like half the size of the kids' heads. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that a photographer from Seattle Weekly was there (K. had to ask all the parents if it was okay with them that he take pictures of the kids with their ice cream), and little kids with giant ice cream cones make for better photos. I also made these mini sugar donut muffins (idea fromromanticalgirl), and they were an huge hit. I wasn't there when they broke them out, but D. says that kids were double fisting them and cramming them into their mouths. He also said that he tried to hoard some of them from the kids because he liked them and wanted to eat them later (shameful).
My vegetable garden is soldiering on, even though they're all like WTF from this insane weather that has a 30° difference from day to day (much as we all are). A few more little tomatoes are peeking out, and I saw a little bee near the tomato flowers yesterday. Pollinate your heart out, little bee! I've started to pinch my basil plants, but my lesson learned from this year is that I need way more basil. Pinching a few at a time doesn't really give me enough to work with, it's not enough for pesto, and once pinched, it doesn't keep well. With more plants, every time I pinch I should have enough to make pesto, at least. The carrots are getting super crazy leafy, except when I dug down to check on the carrots themselves, they're PUNY. I guess my soil isn't loose enough for them. Seriously, the leaves give the impression that they must be huge; they're just making a whole lot of noise over nothing. The birds keep getting to my strawberries before I do. They think the netting is a joke and are laughing at me behind my back. The garlic leaves seem to be dying down, but not as much as K.'s; it'll be awhile before they're ready to harvest. The little zucchini plant is doing well, it's now surpassed its predecessor, but it's not big enough to develop flowers yet. I bought a little jalapeno pepper starter, and it's insanely greedy for water. If I don't water it daily, it droops. O.o Finally, after a second bout with the neighborhood cat, I've moved the catnip indoors to my office, which door I am keeping closed so Jaime doesn't wreck what's left of the poor thing. I don't know if it will fare well inside, and if it doesn't I guess I'll move it back out and just hope that the darn neighborhood cat doesn't succeed in killing it entirely.
I have like four or five story outlines going right now. This is exciting because it's been awhile since I've had that many story ideas clamoring to be written. The difficulty is in concentrating on one of them; I'm not good at multi-tasking when it comes to writing. If I try to write two stories at once, they both suffer. I just need to let one of them take over. Unfortunately, the one that's calling out the strongest right now is also the one I don't have all the answers for, plot/story wise, so I can't start writing until I have all the answers, that's just how I work.
C.'s 5th birthday party on Friday was fun, though dealing with little kids -- even peripherally -- exhausts me. The Molly Moon's truck gave out ENORMOUS scoops of ice cream, HOL-EE. In pictures the scoops are like half the size of the kids' heads. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that a photographer from Seattle Weekly was there (K. had to ask all the parents if it was okay with them that he take pictures of the kids with their ice cream), and little kids with giant ice cream cones make for better photos. I also made these mini sugar donut muffins (idea from
romanticalgirl), and they were an huge hit. I wasn't there when they broke them out, but D. says that kids were double fisting them and cramming them into their mouths. He also said that he tried to hoard some of them from the kids because he liked them and wanted to eat them later (shameful).
