Yummy Garden Goodness

Aha! Everything is in the ground in the garden except my attar of roses geranium. Everything. So two days ago, in went, in order from left to right: Tigress, Tropical Sunset, unknown mauve, Gold Medal, and Moonshadow. Next day, between them, in went: daylily, moonbeam coreopsis. In between the next ones are the peonies that I moved from the side of the house. Next rank, next to the path, are minis: Holy Toledo, Lavender Crystals, Amber Sunset, and Mystery Mauve. Another Mystery Mauve is down the way a little with the wintergreen.

I planted up another bed of radishes (June 17/03) next to the stir-fry mix, which is sprouting nicely. The other radishes are working on their second true leaves so I figured it was about time. The cotoneaster is in the ground in the veggie garden to grow a bit for bonsai.

I moved some of those annoying bulbs from around the peonies, which I shall inaccurately refer to as 'Flame Lilies' until I figure out their real name. They're actually corms or bulbs and not rhizomes, which surprised me. The ones I moved look like they're going to flower now even though they're suffering from severe root-chop (I was trying to get at the peonies, not the lilies, since there are lots of the latter all over the place).

I wonder what colour the peonies will be? They're in awful shape from being strangled by the lilies and in the shade both. Someone had dumped a couple of inches of fireplace ashes over the soil too. But! They'll make it, no problem.

Oh! Also planted: Asao clematis and Warm Welcome minirose climber. They're on the fence in the back garden drawing that yellow/orange/purple colour scheme back into the corner by the shed.

No Arctic Kiwis acquired, may need to wait until next year. Eggplant and passiflora both doing poorly, I'm a little worried. That soil may be deficient. The poppy, which has been growing there for awhile, is chlorotic. There are mottled yellowish patches between the veins and the margins are yellow rather than green. Iron deficiency? Zinc or manganese deficiency? Acid soil which prevents uptake of that sort of thing? Just stress? I really need to do PH testing over there. The sunflowers look fine...

Other stuff: the SO got this game, Gauntlet, and a whole bunch of people hung around playing it last night. Luckily the Juggler (this sounds awful) was sickish and so I got to sneak off into the other room and talk with him. I kind of like having people to sneak off with who don't miss the social stuff. I wonder if it was just the being sick, or if I have a true partner in 'YE-GODS-GET-THEM-ALL-OFF-ME!'?

Went out with the SO and the Other Woman together/alone (in that three-person constellation) for the first time the other day. It put her a little on edge because he and I are definitely much less coupley in public than the Juggler and I, and I think she was worried that she was causing dissonance when really it's just the way we are. Had won ton soup (yay!) which I've been craving for a bit.

Poly is great because at least the SO shares my eating preferences. The rest of y'al just suck. ;)

I need to come up with something that takes shade for the side garden. I want to underplant it with wintergreen. It's next to a hydrangea...

I'm looking forward to going out biking with the Juggler. I'm not terribly certain of my ability, certainly not in traffic, so I'm hoping I pick it up fast. He said something about very early am biking, two in the morningish, and that would really be lovely -- but I need to be able to deal with that before I can go. Bah! I hate being incompetent.

I'm also looking forward to the Folk Fest and the Vanpoly retreat, both of which are lazily coming up here. I'm looking less forward to finding a source of income, which I'm going to have to do sooner or later, here. Not looking forward to that at all. Any advice?

Other than that the weather's been great, nice and variable so some days it's warm and some it's not. The garden likes that, I like that, I wish it would rain a little more and a little warmer, though. I really like warm rains.

I'm settling into the house enough that I'm beginning to know where things are. I'm glad of that skill and I need to keep picking up here to keep it up. I need to come to some sort of arrangement re: doing laundry here.

Oh, bah! The SO ran a D&D game the other night, while I was here, at home. I get to go home and wash dishes. I hope he rinsed them. I keep forgetting about that and really, I'm not looking forward to it at all.

Any more random snippets? Not really. Read a whole bunch of book intros and finally settled on The Myth of Monogamy to read, which is a lot less soapboxish so far than the name would imply -- it's mostly a biological study of sexual vs. social mating habits, and it's well-written in lively language. Nice, after that Pern thing that I still haven't finished.

Need to garden in the front. And... that's about it, really. Happy, healthy, and in the process of life. Take care f'r now.

To Do

Oh, yeah. I need to:

-clip the front hedges straight, which will look terrible for a year.

-arrange a trip with The Other Woman's garden-photographer friend and the crew to Butchart Gardens.

-plant the alyssum seeds.

-acquire more plant tags.

-tell the Other Woman to look at the Nigella seedpods (done, go look!).

-visit kitchen store for potato masher and pepper grinder.

-throw out clothing.

-make tomato cages (would the Juggler be interested in fancy/pretty copper piping cages?).

There's more, but those are the things I'll have trouble remembering. Then there are the things I've already forgotten, of course. :)

Muahahaha!

The digital camera is (mildly) mastered -- at least, I found where the zoom is and the display screen makes framing a picture and such ridiculously easy. Now if I can only figure out how to plug the thing in, I think I killed the batteries...

But, long and short -- I have some pics of the Other Garden, a sort of 'before it starts growing' if not some true befores. I also have some pics of the Juggler, taken before I figured out the zoom, and I plan on getting more of those. He's kinda neat to take pictures of, yannow?

The Winged One's major character on Otherspace died. I'm hoping he's okay and I'm damned sad. I -liked- RPing with him, I really really did.

Maybe I'll be able to ferret out one of his alts.

Oh! I need to remember to take front and side-garden 'before' pics! I can do that now!

The Juggler's mom called. That's two of his immediate family I've answered the phone for. Both seemed a little confused as to what I was doing answering the phone. Maybe I should stop? I'm amused, but I don't want to make him weird about stuff, or rather stuff weird for him.

Things That Entertain

My favourite food is officially the Green Curry from Thai Away Home. I've been looking for that specific kind of curry for so, so long and never been able to find it and there it is... it's the kind of food that makes me want to cry while eating it. Sooo fragrant, creamy/coconut-milky, just exactly right. Smells perfect. Mmmmgods.

So, that was entertaining -- went with The Other Woman and the SO since we had some time to kill and it was really wonderful. Went for a bit of a garden-looking walk after that and it, too, was wonderful.

And now I've come home to The Other House and there's the Juggler with friends-from-work who don't know about me. They're helping him use powertools and I'm very amused. Very amused. And only a little bit nervous, too, so how's that for not bad at all?

And nervous enough to type in sentence fragments. Okay, you win, but I'm still amused.

I'm sure I have more to say but I can't concentrate all too well just now. More when I get home and see my garden, I suppose. Until then be well. :)

Home Again, Home Again...

I'm in tune again. That doesn't mean that I'm not sad, envious, worried, or anxious sometimes. It means that those things are at the levels they should be, that my life is the shape I want and those emotions are adornments that spring from natural, explainable reasons in the proper proportions.

It does mean I feel as if my relationships are in harmony, in the place where I want them given the people I'm with. It means that I'm doing what I like doing -- in this case gardening (we stopped at some friends' on the way home. They're obtaining shovels and such so that I can start on their garden) and active stuff and communication and planning and who knows what else? It means that everything fits into place with my own unique shape and I like that a great deal.

I'm really glad that I was able to slip into closeness with the SO this afternoon/evening without too much jarring. I'm really glad I feel like I can go to him if I need to. I'm really glad of the new shape that my relationship with the Exotic is taking and amazed by how easy this transition seems to be. I'm really glad of the things I have in common with the Juggler and the things I don't, and I'm glad of the way he said goodbye to me three times today and sort of lingered around until I left. I feel cared for and respected, I don't feel strangled. This is all three relationships and my core self going right and my gods, it's really good.

This isn't to say stuff will be easy, although the relationship stuff (knock on wood? Eh, why bother, it won't last ;) is going as smoothly as cherry petals on water -- the pressure in the old arrangement built up, it became unhappy, there was a little bit of a turn and a click and here it's nice again.

I can't tell you how much I love the Exotic for this reasonableness that I still don't expect from him but that he seems to be displaying, this ability to consider himself as a whole person with his own needs which I thought he didn't have. I can't tell you how much I love the SO for sliding seamlessly into caring for me, into reaching for my hand when we're walking and just being able to talk about and listen to things, even when we haven't talked much for a month. I can't tell you how much I love the Juggler for sneaking away with me and doing really important wonderful things -- like talking! really talking! -- when there's all this other stuff going on that could be entertaining him socially.

I can't tell you how much it means to me that my life actually has so much potential in it. I'd really thought that I'd never be this happy, I couldn't even conceive that this could exist. I don't feel dependent on any one person, I don't feel responsible for anyone except myself, I feel as if I can give if it's asked of me.

I'm worried about the SO and how he's not taking care of himself, how he's tired when he doesn't sleep the weekend and then feels awful when he goes to work. I'm worried about how he's stressed out. I'm worried about how the Exotic will handle this change in our relationship and in how things will work when he comes out. I'm... not really worried about the Juggler, actually, except for maybe whether he's getting enough personal/TOW relationship space, but the thing is that none of these things are my burdens. They're borne by someone else and I can give comfort and advice and sometimes even maybe help a little but they just aren't mine.

My own burdens exist, yes, but they're mine to choose and not other people's to put on me. I choose them because they lead down the path I want to take, because the reward for bearing them is worth the effort.

And so, you ask, how are the roses? They're beautiful, there's been no more defoliation, granted it didn't get quite that warm this weekend and they were skillfully clumped to shade each other....

Love, Cadfael, and Abe Darby's flowers are gone, the first flush is over. Heritage is still going and Cecile's started (he's got a very strange flower indeed that's half shoot which is neat, and damn, I miss that digital camera already).

The kiwis look good and I didn't check for blossom drop, the sunflowers have got their first leaves, the baby's breath is indeed blooming, the honeysuckle is climbing quickly and should be pinched back, the clematis leaves are turning vaguely red (from full-sun exposure, I think, not unhealthy but just darkish) and the ground cherries look fine. buttercup has adjusted to her new home nicely, the spruce has started hardening up its shoots, and the bamboo's working on unfurling them.

That's about all I could tell in the dark.

If I were going to be coy I could hint to the Juggler that my Friday is free and the Other Woman's going to be out so we could go biking then. He's noticed that he never gets to ask me over as his girlfriend because I'm always over there as gardener/activity co-participant. Would hinting the above information be too much? I think so. I won't tell anyone about it. ;)

Oh, yeah. He had these work/friends over today and I was amused by that. Luckily I went home soon after -- my mischievous streak was definitely starting to rub. At the very least I wanted to settle close by and grin insanely at the friends whenever they looked my way. That's definitely suspicious behaviour, no? I don't think I could have managed an innocent grin, either.

I realise that the easiest part to play with him would be hopelessly smitten flirt/would-be adulteress which would probably reflect poorly on me to the masses, but hey? It'd be fun. Poor boy.

I seem to have acquired a sunburn and left my good vibrator over at their place. That doesn't strike me as a quite fair exchange, somehow.

Hmm. Well, that's that for now, more another time, and take care. It's a lovely night out; enjoy it.