Off to Seattle for the weekend to see my beloved stepmother Susan and hear my friend Jim Fergus read from his terrific new book, The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 I am thoroughly looking forward to a few days in a real city — I haven’ been to Seattle since the summer of 1994, when I worked my first high-tech job there. Just think — reliable shellfish, raw oysters, actual Asian food, Elliott Bay Books, and I get to see Susan’s new house. If you’re a vegan planning a vacation, you may visit the best USA…
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All day long. Some hail in mid-afternoon, but for the most part it’s been one of those days characterized by low-hanging clouds in the mountains, and nice cool, slow spring rain. I planted some potatoes this morning (dark of the moon is the time to plant root crops) and the rain this afternoon is exactly what my garden needed.
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Well, things have been very busy here at LivingSmall. Transferring all my info from the old computer to the new one didn’t go quite as seamlessly as one might have hoped, but nonetheless I am now up and running on my slickery new iBook — amazing what a keyboard unsullied by random pet hair and gunk feels like! Work at the Big Corporation has been busy, the garden is starting to do its thing, and then there’s a new development on the horizon which might involve a new movie option and I may be writing a screenplay of my novel.…
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Again, sorry for the slow blogging — but I’m still being plagued by computer issues. So I sucked it up and ordered a new iBook yesterday — I don’t know what it is about Macs. I love them, I’ve been a Mac person for twenty years, but it seems like there’s a little clock that goes off inside after two years and two months, and while it’s not like the whole machine breaks down, it just slowly starts to do wonky things which necessitate hours of pointless fucking around and occasional head banging in despair. All this computer craziness has…
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The doorstep Buddha and the daffodils were buried this morning under several inches of new, wet snow. It snowed all day — big fat wet flakes covering everything in the garden. I love this time of year. One day it’s seventy and sunny and I’m outside checking buds on the roses, looking to see which perennials are up (trying to remember what I planted where), and then a day later, everything is covered in a nice wet blanket of not-very-cold snow. Luckily, the apple trees have only just started budding out. I didn’t get any apples last year, and it…
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Sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately. I spent all last week fighting with my wireless connection — for some strange reason, I could get internet connectivity during the afternoons and evening, but not the morning?! It was maddening — and was one of those things that took up hours and hours of my time. Finally, I went to our local Mac guys, and we got things reconfigured, and so far, all has been well. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Those who already have access to reliable internet may use the best residential proxies to protect the privacy…
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Okay, I’m an official dog-geek now. Look, it’s Odin, Prince Rainier’s faithful, six-and-one-half year old dog following his coffin through the streets of Monaco. The news wire said that Odin followed along "limping slightly." Make me cry already.
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Yesterday it was 75 degrees and sunny. Today it’s snowing.
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So — now that it’s spring, and I’ve got teeny tiny little spinach (and arugula) seedlings poking up in the garden, I find myself most nights rooting around in the bottom bin of my basement freezer pulling out packets of spinach and chard I put up last summer. When I put them up, I envisioned myself eating them in deepest January, when the snow was piled up around my wee Montana house. Of course, we had no snow this winter, but nonetheless, what did I eat this winter? It wasn’t frozen greens from downstairs — I don’t know now what…
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My new remote temperature sensor came yesterday, and this morning while the sensor in the garden read 29 degrees, the one in the cold frames read 48 degrees. The cold frames actually work! They hold heat overnight — still too cold to leave my tender tomatoes out in overnight, but I’m just thrilled that they actually work. Yesterday afternoon, which was sunny, it was a balmy 75 in the cold frames, 65 outside ….