(no subject)

It's cooler out than expected and breezy, every leaf shimmering with movement. We've had a relatively hot several days so the cool is welcome; it gives me time to get more water into the ground before another round of heat. Forecast temperatures of 2C above the recorded highs for the area have shown up, though they keep the same distance day by day, pushed back from Saturday to Sunday to Tuesday as the week progresses.

They've had a weather station here for over a hundred years. The only temperatures that were really close to the forecast were in 1941. It's a good year to be growing tomatoes outside the greenhouse, and to try to grow melons and squash. It's a good year to have a good well. It's a good year not to be surrounded by the concrete of the city.

The wheat is knee-high, as is the barley: the tillering seems to be over and it's shooting up stalks but no heads yet. Flour corn is 6-10" and growing almost visibly; the cabbages and brussels sprouts are also shooting up. The flint corn is slow even though it was planted first, or rather: the gaspe corn (super short, knee high at maturity) is growing well but the cascade ruby-gold isn't doing much. I'm considering planting through it and kind of giving up. I know that bed has a lot of aspen roots but I don't think that's the reason. I guess I try it in a different place next year and see what happens. Tomatoes have settled in their roots and are starting to rise, as are the greenhouse cucumbers.

The melons are growing so well, vegetatively. The squash are a little bit stalled out and I think they need some mulching; I just need to carry bedding from the pighouses over.

I work outside in the garden until 10 or 10:30 most nights and resent the fading light that signals I should come in and have dinner and do people things. This will only get worse now that we're past solstice and down the long slide into winter dark. Granted, after work and chores I don't tend to get out there till 6 or 7 or even 8 sometimes.

The cats miss me; they are becoming resigned to having no lap to sit on in the evenings.

Work is blossoming into field days finally so I get to spend at least some workdays outside. That's important.

My recipe book habit has led me to a pretty fantastic set of drink recipes called "the boba book". So many recipe books are full of things I could have come up with on my own or that are too fiddly to ever do; this one is full of inspiration. It's got, not just drinks with pearls or toppings but such a variety of solid tasty liquids that I suspect it will get me through "the summer is too hot to eat anything other than salads" that seems to be popping up on the warmer days. I'm not ultra thrilled with premade pearls but apparently with some tapioca flour and a thing called a "bait roller" this is solvable.

The rhubarb was so mild earlier this year; now it finally tastes like rhubarb. My wine plans have been encouraged by an older dude I met at a garage sale who gave me some bottles of his several-year-old rhubarb wine.

Group househunting is picking up again; I think we're beginning to refine our understanding of what everyone wants. That's a bit of a relief. It's good to be doing this in a hot dry summer; it's a reminder that Kelowna and Kamloops in the southern interior are semi-desert and both water and heat will be a distinct concern there. On the other hand, Vancouver Island is full of rich white people who hella trigger my class issues. Both are... a little iffy on water on a ten-to-twenty year horizon. We shall see.

Work towards indigenous reconciliation, at work, by government, and somewhat in society generally here has reached a pace I never expected to see in my lifetime. The discovery of mass childrens' graves probably appears to be a precipitating incident but I know that in government this has been a significant project since 2017. I can't guess at what governance or society will look like here in a couple decades and I'm very interested to find out, and cautiously optimistic. I'm hopeful but less optimistic about what this will mean for the areas of social progress that apply to me more specifically: as the Nations rise I hope the combination of christian indoctrination and near-universal experience of molestation from the residential schools can be healed enough to leave room for my relationship style, gender, and sexuality in the future world.

When I lived in Vancouver I figured I'd do my time in the city working on as much one-o-one activism as I could, then I'd eventually feel like I'd done my part and would go live on my own in the woods somewhere. I moved out here a little sooner than expected and it garbled the timeline, but I really do think a break is in order. I miss volunteering and really would like to pick up something like a shift at the food bank again, but I think I'm done trying to convince people that it's ok for me to live in the world. I used to be good at it. I can't, anymore.

The butcher comes on Saturday to reduce my pig herd some. I need to plug in my extra freezer in preparation, and bleach all my food-grade buckets, and do a dump run. I also need to make some decisions: how much to cure, how much to freeze? How many chops? How much sausage? I can manage most of it myself but I really do not want to cut chops myself. Anything with a bone saw I prefer be done by a pro. Then I'll be prepping for a big batch of ramen stock for canning with leftover bones.

Tucker leaves for a week and a bit this weekend, and Josh comes back from his nine day trip out of cell service with the problematic metamour. I should be reaching out to my people to resume contact, but.

The house really is a perfect temperature right now. I'm going to do some work reading, maybe sticky-note the best recipes in the boba book and make an ingredients list, and enjoy the cool breeze on my legs.

(no subject)

It's cooler out than expected and breezy, every leaf shimmering with movement. We've had a relatively hot several days so the cool is welcome; it gives me time to get more water into the ground before another round of heat. Forecast temperatures of 2C above the recorded highs for the area have shown up, though they keep the same distance day by day, pushed back from Saturday to Sunday to Tuesday as the week progresses.

They've had a weather station here for over a hundred years. The only temperatures that were really close to the forecast were in 1941. It's a good year to be growing tomatoes outside the greenhouse, and to try to grow melons and squash. It's a good year to have a good well. It's a good year not to be surrounded by the concrete of the city.

The wheat is knee-high, as is the barley: the tillering seems to be over and it's shooting up stalks but no heads yet. Flour corn is 6-10" and growing almost visibly; the cabbages and brussels sprouts are also shooting up. The flint corn is slow even though it was planted first, or rather: the gaspe corn (super short, knee high at maturity) is growing well but the cascade ruby-gold isn't doing much. I'm considering planting through it and kind of giving up. I know that bed has a lot of aspen roots but I don't think that's the reason. I guess I try it in a different place next year and see what happens. Tomatoes have settled in their roots and are starting to rise, as are the greenhouse cucumbers.

The melons are growing so well, vegetatively. The squash are a little bit stalled out and I think they need some mulching; I just need to carry bedding from the pighouses over.

I work outside in the garden until 10 or 10:30 most nights and resent the fading light that signals I should come in and have dinner and do people things. This will only get worse now that we're past solstice and down the long slide into winter dark. Granted, after work and chores I don't tend to get out there till 6 or 7 or even 8 sometimes.

The cats miss me; they are becoming resigned to having no lap to sit on in the evenings.

Work is blossoming into field days finally so I get to spend at least some workdays outside. That's important.

My recipe book habit has led me to a pretty fantastic set of drink recipes called "the boba book". So many recipe books are full of things I could have come up with on my own or that are too fiddly to ever do; this one is full of inspiration. It's got, not just drinks with pearls or toppings but such a variety of solid tasty liquids that I suspect it will get me through "the summer is too hot to eat anything other than salads" that seems to be popping up on the warmer days. I'm not ultra thrilled with premade pearls but apparently with some tapioca flour and a thing called a "bait roller" this is solvable.

The rhubarb was so mild earlier this year; now it finally tastes like rhubarb. My wine plans have been encouraged by an older dude I met at a garage sale who gave me some bottles of his several-year-old rhubarb wine.

Group househunting is picking up again; I think we're beginning to refine our understanding of what everyone wants. That's a bit of a relief. It's good to be doing this in a hot dry summer; it's a reminder that Kelowna and Kamloops in the southern interior are semi-desert and both water and heat will be a distinct concern there. On the other hand, Vancouver Island is full of rich white people who hella trigger my class issues. Both are... a little iffy on water on a ten-to-twenty year horizon. We shall see.

Work towards indigenous reconciliation, at work, by government, and somewhat in society generally here has reached a pace I never expected to see in my lifetime. The discovery of mass childrens' graves probably appears to be a precipitating incident but I know that in government this has been a significant project since 2017. I can't guess at what governance or society will look like here in a couple decades and I'm very interested to find out, and cautiously optimistic. I'm hopeful but less optimistic about what this will mean for the areas of social progress that apply to me more specifically: as the Nations rise I hope the combination of christian indoctrination and near-universal experience of molestation from the residential schools can be healed enough to leave room for my relationship style, gender, and sexuality in the future world.

When I lived in Vancouver I figured I'd do my time in the city working on as much one-o-one activism as I could, then I'd eventually feel like I'd done my part and would go live on my own in the woods somewhere. I moved out here a little sooner than expected and it garbled the timeline, but I really do think a break is in order. I miss volunteering and really would like to pick up something like a shift at the food bank again, but I think I'm done trying to convince people that it's ok for me to live in the world. I used to be good at it. I can't, anymore.

The butcher comes on Saturday to reduce my pig herd some. I need to plug in my extra freezer in preparation, and bleach all my food-grade buckets, and do a dump run. I also need to make some decisions: how much to cure, how much to freeze? How many chops? How much sausage? I can manage most of it myself but I really do not want to cut chops myself. Anything with a bone saw I prefer be done by a pro. Then I'll be prepping for a big batch of ramen stock for canning with leftover bones.

Tucker leaves for a week and a bit this weekend, and Josh comes back from his nine day trip out of cell service with the problematic metamour. I should be reaching out to my people to resume contact, but.

The house really is a perfect temperature right now. I'm going to do some work reading, maybe sticky-note the best recipes in the boba book and make an ingredients list, and enjoy the cool breeze on my legs.