SunnyBusy

It's good to be too busy to enter stuff into the journal. I'm practicing being Greenstorm recently, doing the things that I need to do for myself and the things that I enjoy doing, with the assumption that if the world really needs me to do something I'll figure it out. This is one of my two modes of operation; the other is to anticipate everything possible and act on the anticipated consequences of everything. That one's quite nice sometimes, like flying or puppeting, but when there are too many things to anticipate or two many strings to pull it falls apart.

So what's been happening? A lot of gardening stuff, mostly. Got the main bed dug and amended yesterday with The Juggler's help, three bales of peat moss and six bags of mushroom manure/steer manure later it's feeling good. Mixing in all that stuff makes me nervous because it does a number on the soil's crumb structure, but give it a week where it's watered regularly and not disturbed when wet and it'll be good.

What's crumb structure, you ask? Well, soil isn't composed of loose particles. It's composed of particles that are clumped together, glued with organic matter. Those clumps are variably sized and they're one of the things that hold air space in soil among other functions. Soil without these clumps is known as either dust (dry) or mud (wet). When you go and dig up an entire garden to a depth of ten inches and mix the entire layer of soil with peat and manure you're breaking the soil up into kind of small clumps if you do it right, or completely into dust if you do it wrong. We've done it right so far, but because the soul's been broken up into such small pieces it needs to rest and re-clump around the peat and the manure. If I go messing with it when it's wet the clumps will be impermeable bricks. If I go pounding at it when it's really dry it'll go to dust. If I work it a reasonable amount when it's damp the clumps will re-form and stay together both, and it'll be good.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. So we got that bed dug and amended and headed out to Southlands nursery to look for pots for my mint. Wow! I mean, Wow!

This place is full of Jackson and Perkins' roses, their selection is unbelievable. Their prices are what you'd expect from a nursery in Point Grey that grows JAckson and PErkins' roses and has a selection of unique and exotic stuff. They have Tropical Sunset, they have the majority of the Austin roses... lovely, lovely place. They've also got something like five kinds of fig and this Iris called Black Flag. Look up the Black Flag iris on google images or gardenweb. It's even more astounding and beautiful in real life. This flower is true black and deep violet, and the edges of the petals glow. Literally glow...

So we came home with a Moonshadow (yes, she really likes purple roses) and three lavenders. We also came home with two Sungold tomatoes and two Beefsteak -- the Juggler used to do vegetable gardening and he wants to get back into it. The curvy bed is going to be mostly his then, since it gets more sun. Marigolds there, I think, the tomatoes, some squash, and we'll see what else I can think up. Radishes for sure, maybe eggplant if I can find a start at the Farmers' market, and... damn. I had a good idea for the fence earlier today but I can't remember it. It's getting late to do seeds in most cases, but this was the right time for whatever I had in mind. Oh, well.

I need to go seed shopping with him.

So, goals for today? Finish weeding the curvy garden preparatory to amending the soil, look up removal of big ugly hedging cedars, go to a kitchen shop and get a pepper grinder with the SO and the Other Woman, who wanted to get something there. Call mom, probably, since she misses me and my brother's graduating high school this weekend (prolly should attend, I'm proud of him. It hasn't been easy). Research vines. Actually get plant pots for the mint, since Southlands didn't have any good ones. Think about how to create paving stones with concrete and sand (hollow out your mold in sand, pour) because it would be much cooler to make those than to buy them.

It's kind of neat, The Juggler is a craftsman, he likes making things where you've got a process and a concrete end result (amending soil into a good bed, raising vegetables, building an arcade game cabinet) and The Other Woman is big on aesthetics. Between them I have interest in most areas of the garden covered.

Been reading a bunch of Spider Robinson lately. I think it's time to crack into The Other Woman's psychology books on serial killers to help dissipate the sappy/happy fiction mood, then I can go on to more Spider Robinson. Variety is important.

I had a thought the other day while watching the Juggler. You might as well do something rather than not, just in a general sense, and when you choose to do things rather than not your life becomes really productive. That is, given the choice between feeling sleepy and napping and feeling sleepy, going outside, waking up, and doing the garden... one will be productive and one won't and you won't feel much different the next say whatever choice you make. So why not make the busy one?

I have the feeling that's the kind of epiphany that, if followed up on, could make one a scary person indeed.

Things are kind of on hold with The Exotic right now. We need to work out our expectation sets for the relationship because there are some serious issues right now. It's work and a lot of it, but my batteries are recharging. I need to work on not feeling trapped and not reacting to my feelings of being trapped, coerced, and objectified -- I need to be acting on Greenstorm internals instead of reacting with Greenstorm contrariness.

Ah, hm. I'll figure things out.

Keep well.

My Way or the Highway

I'm beginning to learn some things, or perhaps beginning to formulate some things into words that I've learnt gradually over the last little while.

One of these things is that life isn't a matter of getting exactly what you want or going without. Life is a matter of finding things you want and deciding which compromises you need to undergo to get them -- whether that's compromising in other parts of your life, or compromising your wants, or compromising the parts of the thing you get isn't the issue.

The issue is simply that you shouldn't discard something outright just because some parts aren't exactly as you want them.

It seems kind of obvious, written down, and I've always been a proponent of not allowing a lack of compromise in myself, with my own weird issues, to get in the way of things I want. I hadn't connected it to being able to accept parts of something until now. And I realise, too, that not doing something out of the fear that you'll do it, like it, and then have the loss of losing it is kind of silly most of the time. Better to do and have at least that, and mourn and then let the loss go if it comes along?

My current lack of understanding centers more around which things actually are okay to discard or pass up, what too difficult really means, and where my boundaries are.

Now, a search for yellow-flowered ground cover.

Bang, Clatter, and Productivity

Oh, yeah. Last night the Juggler dressed me up in his SCA armour and hit me with a big stick a bunch of times. This was on purpose. I've had violent urges lately and he's offered to let me vent them on him, but needed to prove to me first that it wouldn't hurt him.

There's something very sexy about the whole thing, dressing up in his armour, that is. Not just because the padded jacket can be torn dramatically open in front but the whole experience, being clothed and bound in this restrictive stuff, the smell of it all leather and sweat and metal-serious, just playing around and doing something silly and having fun, the way one has to walk to keep the knee-guards from locking together...

The helmet really does ring when it's hit, ye gods! I'd need earplugs to actually do that for long. It really is so, so neat.

I've finished weeding the side garden, staked the poppy that I daren't move, moved everything else to the other one. This is the result of the 'nap, reading, or do something useful' choice that I decided to make productively. I'll have to see about amending the thing soon, to get those tomatoes in.

Made up a list of things I expect/need from my relationship with the Exotic. Will elaborate on them on here when I've had a chance to talk with him.

Now for more food. At least I'm eating semi-regularly again. :)