Greenstorm's Journal

It's been awhile since I wrote. I had that truly terrible cluster of migraine symptoms at first, then work was extremely busy -- we did a last minute heli flight that lasted a full workday, then I was helping with a conference one town over, then I was recovering, then I was helping with our seedy saturday, then I did a tiny bit of pottery at the studio, now it's now. It really took everything I had to get through that. I gave up on non-masked human social stuff for that couple weeks, on doing more than minimum for food and house. Now I want to sink into the deep pool of peace that is my house and my life. I want to watch my cat sleeping and intermittently pet him for hours while my mind unspools and processes.

There's a lot to process.

It's spring and the geese are all over the yard looking for nests and there are melt-pools everywhere. I can hear gregarious honking through my dog door.

While I was at the end of the conference, but still in it, before the drive home, I was sending off a quick email to my supervisor about how my work hours supported the yearly priority plan. I used the term "DEI" and he didn't know what that meant; I sent him a copy of our organization's new DEI plan that had come out and been circulated something like last fall and he said thank you; he didn't dispute (and never does) the time I spend on this but wow.

I introduced my colleague to proper vietnamese food for the first time and as I was dressing and flipping my pho he asked how I knew how to eat it. He loved it, even the (truly phenomenal) fish sauce.

I gave away 8 mugs as door prizes and several hundred packets of my own seed at seedy saturday. They had someone else as a speaker this year talking about "proper" seed saving (how not to cross, for instance) so I spent my time at the seed tables. First I was stuffing envelopes with seed and directing people to label them as I stuffed, but we quickly ran out of packets. Then I showed people how to do the origami seed packets, the librarian used her paper cutter and a pile of recycled paper to make squares, and we folded, filled, and taped. People kept coming in with big bags of seed. Someone came in with elaborate origami seed packets with a crane folded into them. We had such an incredible richness of local seeds come in, I felt so honoured, like a conservator of a community treasure. Several thousand packets of seed went out, free, to people. My mugs, some plant starts, other folks' homemade wine went out as door prizes. The space was packed. Everyone said it was an amazing event. One of the speakers brought 75 varieties of tomato seed to give away. They say that in the coastal indigenous cultures your wealth was measured by what you give away, and I always feel that, and last Saturday I felt wealthy. All the extra seeds go to the new seed library in the library there so anyone who missed the event can still grow things. A+ use of my time but following on the end of a long week it was a lot, and by this time I was really missing talking to my people.

Dogs finally got treated for the fleas Solly picked up when she went on her walkabout. I hadn't seen any in the last month but that means very little. I've been watching videos of a professional dog groomer doing livestock guardian dogs on youtube and trying to figure out how I could wash my pups. I'll settle for getting the mats out and doing a deep brush. Avallu's been loving this; I think it's time to start treating Solly for it. Thea has realized it gets her attention so she's settled into it.

My pepper seeds are all up except for the african birds eye. It's getting on time to start tomatoes and separate the peppers, which means setting up more lights, which means clearing a shelf or two, which means doing some work on my storage container. My first round of seeds, tomatoes from Jan 1st, is doing well-- some of the micros are flowering, and the F2s exhibit the breathtaking diversity that hold me in awe and that I'd always hoped to attain.

The headache seems to be somewhat recurring, but not as constant as it was. Nausea is a near-constant struggle. These two things may (?) be correlated to air quality, as they may get worse when I turn off the CR box or have the windows closed? On the other hand it's warmed up and I can keep a couple windows cracked open so my body just feels lighter in a lot of ways.

In two weeks I'm driving to the coast for a couple days to visit Tucker and bring him (and some clay) back up, maybe disseminate some mugs.

This Wed is a bisque kiln and possibly the following weekend a glaze kiln, that doesn't leave much time for glazing.

Odds and ends, unprocessed. Spring is coming. My mind doesn't think well. Still I'm doing what I love and am happy; I only hope this life doesn't have that fall expiry date.

The painted mountain and magic manna (which is a selection out of painted mountain) look quite similar, as plants. They're silking and pollen dropping, for the most part.

Weirdly cascade ruby gold is starting to drop pollen but I see very few silks in it. The tallest tassel is 8' tall or something like that. Maybe it needs water?

Saskatoon white has two different flower colours but looks pretty uniform otherwise. It's had silks out for a couple days now.

Atomic orange is in full silk.

Saskatchewan rainbow has so so so many cobs on the plants, I can't wait to open them.

The first open oak party tassel is visible, it's definitely not going to make it. Likewise homestead yellow and early riser, though they are all huge plants.

There are a bunch of big green tomatoes in the promiscuous patch, I need to get in there and do some pruning. Likewise Mikado Black has a bunch of quite large tomatoes about ready to turn, and I suspect Minsk Early is about to give a bunch of smaller ones. Meanwhile the northern mixed row is variable, some plants have a bunch of nice-looking fruit and some really do not. There's a weird potato leaf plant that has tiny marble-sized fruit that don't look like they're getting any bigger. That might be a bee cross, and woth checking out the F2 on.

I should plant everything further apart for screening purposes, though planting it close together for pollination purposes was a legit idea. I'm likely to miss fruit in this jungle though.

A second melon has started, on a different plant, that looks similar in shape to the first melon. It would be hilarious if I got melons but not squash this year?

One particular squash has elongated football-shaped fruits on its female flowers, yellow with a green patch, and the three plants spread across my different plantings are super super vigorous both from seed and from transplant. I'm curious about which squash it is. Tons and tons of flowers on all the squash but not very many squashes growing. There are some, though, and lots of busy bees in the flowers.

Bees *love* arugula and I think are neglecting the rest of the garden for it.

The bouchard peas are sizing up nicely. They're such manageable little plants, I put them in with turnips and they're all the same height.

Lots of flowers on the beans but no baby beans. Um?

Some pods sizing o=up on the favas finally.

I need to plant the fall favas soon. And sort out my fall grain.

I've been cutting heads off the dango mugi barley on my deck as they hit hard dough stage, I don't want birds to get them. That is a very, very successful seed increase, I'll have something like two dozen heads from 5 seeds planted this spring at this rate.

Planted seed for dwarf, micro, and F1 tomatoes for the winter.

Transplanted a bunch of peppers into 1 gallon containers.

Bought a bunch of hydroponics stuff in prep for winter.

I'm really, really enjoying the garden right now. Even the raspberries, which I totally neglected, are being nice to me.