Greenstorm's Journal

Tired but not completely dead after going to the thing on the weekend.

I think the medication reduction (and shift in time of taking it) is helping. I seem to have roughly 12-14 hours after taking the pills that I need to be able to sleep, so if I take them a couple hours before bed I'm lucid a little earlier. But also 75mg just makes me way, way less exhausted than 100mg.

I probably gave away 70-80 packets of seed on the weekend, maybe a little more? I like doing that. I need to come up with a better system for packaging seed, though. Portioning it out and labelling it is slow and if I wait to do it till right before the seeds go out my PDA kicks in. I think I need to leisurely design labels and fill packets earlier in the winter. This is significantly less seed given away than a year or two ago (I think my max was a thousand packets one spring?) but it's all local, and that's nice.

I should explore how I feel about taking money or not for things I make with my therapist, probably with the one who I vibe with more spiritually/nature-relatedly. I haven't seen that one in awhile, and I should. The one I'm seeing right now is the PDA strategies and therapy modes geek, which serves a very different need. I'm pretty glad I have both of them. I feel really good when I give away what I make, but I also feel like "the weird one" again and that can be kinda rough? I don't get that feeling too often, since I don't often violate important social norms (like our capitalistic mode of reciprocity).

Geese are laying. Swans are coming back to the next town over, where they will blanket the fields in what looks like living snow as they glean grain before continuing on their migration. They're usually here for about a week, and I should probably drive down and soak them in. They are beautiful. I hope they're not hard hit by Avian Influenza this year: the migratory birds carry it and spread it.

 All three Zestar! apples are in the ground now, along with the two Valiant, one La Crescent, and one Marquette grape. I haven't finished guilding the other two, but the first has its black velvet gooseberry and cinnamon rose and some asparagus to start. I need to flatten more cardboard to mulch a bunch of the guild plants when I put them in. The last apple is pretty cozy with some raspberries and a comfrey plant already. Maybe I'll give it a sentry rose?

I just noticed many of my guilding plants have thorns - gooseberry, rose, raspberry.

This morning I went up and collected pollen from the first atomic orange and sakskatoon white that were pollinating, and put it on some of the gaspe corn that was tasselling over in the Early Riser underplanted bed -- early riser is nowhere near tasselling or silking so the gaspe that were interspersed there needed some additional pollen. I also moved around the morden, saksatoon white, saskatchewan rainbow, and gaspe pollen in the main garden.

The gaspe looks fabulous.

Tomatoes are blooming very heavily, especially some of the minsk early and taiga and the peruvianum. Lots of little green tomatoes in the promiscuous bed and in the minsk early and zesty green plants especially, though the northern mixed bed also has many. The taiga on my deck is the one I want to save seed from, it's super floriferous to the point that it looks like a multiflora a little. I want to snip a cutting from it for hydroponic crosses for sure.

Lucinda is a much slower-to-bloom plant than silvery fir tree, and it seems to be less prolific.

Mikado black has beefsteakier blooms than I remember. Corrie in town has some of my minsk black seeds and she's saying one plant in particular has super beefsteaky flowers compared to the others, I'm interested to see how the fruit present. They are both potato leaf so I don't think it would likely be a cross?

Lots of bumblebees on the tomatoes in the morning.

Some of the first female fruits on the squash shrivelled up, they those plants better get moving if they want to produce before fall. They're sure vining a lot, though, and the melons are flowering like mad so I'm interested to see if either of them make it.

Of the corns, I'll definitely grow gaspe, Saskatchewan rainbow, Saskatoon white, atomic orange, magic manna, and painted mountain again. Probably also cascade ruby gold, though it's just starting to think about tasselling and may not make it. I think open oak party, oaxacan green, montana morado, and maybe early riser aren't going to be fast enough though early riser is going super fast right now.

Of the tomatoes, I'm really enjoing the mixed northern patch. The promiscuous patch is kind of uniform seeming right now, but I absolutely cannot guess at what's going on with the mixed northern one. Note to self: next year only do 6 max each of the standard minsk early, moravsky div, and silvery fir tree and 2 each of named varieties. I want at least 150 or so unknown plants to play with. The dwarves: saucy mary, bundaberg rumball, and uluru ochre are opening buds soon but not quite yet, I'm really hoping they ripen in time. Meanwhile a ton of very, very floriferous volunteer tomatoes are filling the saskatchewan rainbow and assiniboine flint holes left by the crows with a sea of yellow. I think there's also a patch in one of the bean beds that's very friendly looking.

Next year I am definitely planting out some gold nugget and sundream and red kuri squashes to do deliberate pollinations with. I am just not certain that anything that's out there now will actually ripen. If it does there are sure lots of fathers to choose from though.

The bouchard peas have set a nice crop of pods, turnips are sizing up nicely, I remain in love with brassica carinata though it's becoming more of a sauteeing green, and my scattered gai lan is growing nice thick juicy stalks.

I wish I could spend all my time out there. Maybe next year.