New Things/The Year Awakens

[greenstorm]

I have two kinds of hot peppers growing indoors, rescued from my deck at the end of the year: matchbox and black hungarian. As the light has returned and I've increased their water they've started blooming. I did a very impromptu cross-pollination between them yesterday, no anther removal, and will try emasculating some flowers and doing a proper cross next time. If I grow the F1 out this summer, next winter I can have a sea of F2s to play with.

Some of my fancy peppers are coming up, or at least germinating on their paper towels and heat mats and being transferred to pots.

Plus I found the pepper seed store Semillas La Palma, which is a lot of fun. A lot of peppers aren't great in my climate, but when I branch into baccatums and high-elevation ones I can find some. I love the idea of hunting down some and trying them here. I also like heat but not super intense heat, and the fact that there are a ton of "seasoning" or "dulce" peppers in their collection, with no heat, is nice too. I need to winnow down through their offerings to find what works.

The sun is completely returning. The sky was light before I got out of bed this morning. It's been warm during the day a lot, my freezers are plugged back in and I moved the frozen food on my deck into the freezers.

Plus, Black Chunk, who I thought miscarried during the cold, gave me six lovely little piglets. They're born in a warm spell! I locked her in her chosen birthing shed with the piglets and they were all fine this morning. They'll need to be castrated but hey.

In concert with this the cooler at the grocery store broke down and I brought home 40 dairy crates of milk and yoghurt for the pigs. I'm feeding it out roughly four crates a day. There were a couple crates of tiny squeeze bottles of yogurt that will go directly in the garbage, but the pigs will get gallons and gallons of it. It's a great supplement for them right now.

Meanwhile I'm doing the standard juggling to try and figure out where to put my plant shelves with lights, where to put my geese for spring pair-off(wading out to the empty greenhouse involves thigh-deep snow and too many things under the snow to snowblow my way over, ditto one of the a-frames). At some point I'll get to what to plant and where it will go, that will be even more juggling! But it's the fun kind.

Comments

[greenstorm]

Ohhhh, link to the tub if it's for sale anywhere? I'm considering whether a hot tub or a remodel on my bathroom is in my 5 year plan (likely more like an 8 year plan, for similar reasons).

[yarrowkat]

i'll ask Bri!

this is the general sort of thing: https://www.build.com/duravit-700407-r-19tall/s1666765?uid=3938929

Bri's has gently curved long sides, though. if you go to the search bar on the left side of that page, there are loads of options, depending on the amount of space you have and type of tub you want (free standing, drop in, alcove).

i have a hottub, too, and it's outdoors, which does mean i take baths just as often as i soak in the hottub, for two reasons: increased privacy (and lack of interruption/ lack of spoken or unspoken social pressure to invite others to join me in the tub - this is a "living in community" problem, clearly), and weather. sometimes for rituals, which feel like they work better in the bath, to me. esp if i'm going to add botanicals to the bath; not going to do that to my hottub filter, which i then have to clean.

[greenstorm]

Oh, so they're not ultra-luxury, they're just... big tubs. Interesting. I didn't know those were available.

I've had so many water-baby partners, folks for whom water was solace and joy to be in. My skin counterindicates it mostly, these days, but I also think I've never had that same connection. Lie me in a hammock or on the grass, though, and I am home. Tubs are mostly about temperature for me without the discomfort of clothing. There is nothing as lovely as being outside in the snow in a hot tub, and being warm enough to get out and walk around awhile without being touched by the cold.

[yarrowkat]

Bri says they went through Dreamstyle for the tub; https://www.dreamstyleremodeling.com/products/shower-systems/

it's just a big bathtub, right. luxury if you love hot water, but it's not a jacuzzi. their particular tub has nice detailing that makes it feel fancy without adding anything other than sleek/elegant aesthetics to it. which is very "Brian."

i am in a serious long-term relationship with hot water. :) i have often thought that the entire point of civilization is hot running water. that's a lovely feeling, being out in the tub on a cold night and so warm that the cold air feels really good.

[greenstorm]

I always thought of making a cedar strip hot tub (or house tub!) in the back of my mind, but it's unlikely I'll ever get to it. A friend of mine used to have one of the japanese upright barrel hot tubs and I quite liked that. Contorting myself to fit all into the water always feels silly, and baths are better (for me) in company.

Alas for being allergic (!) to the shift from hot water to cold air now. I guess I could take allergy pills but my body still prickles under the skin about it.

[yarrowkat]

eep, that sounds awful. your skin doesn't like the rapid temperature change?

[greenstorm]

About ten years ago I developed my current suite of weird allergies, including pot some scents and an allergy to, effectively, cold (in some ways it's cold + pressure, so for instance cotton tights will trigger it, or turning a cold metal tap on the outside of the house; in some ways it's a change from heat to cold so I think that stepping out of hot water with water on my skin which then evaporates is responsible).

When I'm exposed to none of them at all for a long time, I become more tolerant. When I'm exposed to multiple, or when I'm under stress, they get extra excitable.

The temperature one, at least, mostly responds to allergy pills. Bodies are weird.