Greenstorm's Journal

Oh goodness, where even to start. Yesterday I disappeared into the garden. I'm sure I did things but I don't remember what I did, other than in the late evening as the sun was setting I planted saskatoons in front of the spruce hedge. They seem to grow well even under spruce, and even though they were planted into the crevices in a matt of thick roots I have hope that, if I water them, they'll do as well as the other saskatoons I planted there. Once those bushes are well rooted the spruce can eventually come down.

The US bombed Iran yesterday. I was going to say "started a war" but we have a lot of weasel words to avoid that term these days. Someone or other in some gov or other was like "this could be viewed as an act of war" and I just... y'think?

I hda a bit of an online chat with a friend, brushed dogs lots, I'm sure I did other things. I rested as needed but the biometrics on my watch are telling me I'm overdoing it. Still, I made it through a shower and clean hair (I wore sunscreen, which means a full scrubdown every evening or my skin falls off) and... oh, I ran seeper hose irrigation and watered things that way.

We're under a smoke advisory here and the purpleair site (we pretty much have to use private business sites to know air quality unless we're right in a big city, because of course wildfire smoke is primarily in big cities) says that both my town and the town next door have bad air quality. Having said that, it doesn't seem that bad here? I probably should get a monitor, more money to replace yet another function that I consider the gov should do. It just doesn't smell like smoke... though I guess I have been choking a lot more than normal, but that also happens when I overextend myself and my swallow muscles get lazy. Anyhow, it's felt like my place has been in a little oasis of clean air so I've had the windows open and been outside without a mask.

This morning I woke early, turned on the fan to pull cool morning air in, and went back to bed to sleep in and to listen to an agatha christie audiobook. I'm having an experience I haven't had before -- the absolute freedom and joy of having an accessibility device, in this case the audiobook version of my old friends. Honestly even holding up a book takes something out of me, apart from the weird reading thing after my accident AND the weird vision thing. I can read a book I don't even like, or think "I'm not sure I enjoy this" because I don't need to fully minmax every letter in every word. I can lie in bed and read like I used to, comfortably, freely. It's life changing, or maybe life restoring?

I'd been going device-lite during solstice so I missed a text from the tree company; they showed up with chips, I rushed downstairs and put Avallu in, got delightful woodchips, the dogs were exceptionally well-behaved, it was very good. I carried a purring Siri around for awhile out there.

Then I came in and learned my brother's wife had their kid. It might have been yesterday? I hadn't checked that communication channel for a bit. Looks like it's a boy, and there are pictures of my mom and other brother there with the kid (but not my antivax brother in the picture, I've been really worried about that with measles being a big thing now and obviously covid is still around). I need to call Mom and get the details. Between Mom and my sister-in-law's (?that's such a weird thought) huge family with lots of her own sisters and parents and aunties I'm sure they're being well cared-for.

So, big 24 hours, and much better than expected given world events. I now have an abundance of chips to do paths as well as mulch. I need to get my hardy kiwis in the ground because the cats are eating them. I'd like to trellis the tomatoes at some point -- oh yes, I mulched some of them! and plant oaks and graft apples. The first flower clusters on the tomatoes are showing up, 3 weeks after the plants went in the ground more-or-less.

Now that I'm home, and still on leave from work, I am finally able to sort some of the stuff out I'd intended to get to originally. My capacity is tiny, which is to say I have a couple to a few hours of movement/doing things if they're interspersed with resting per day, one phone call every second day or so whether it's practical/medical or for social, eating several times a day but minimal food-making, and that's mostly it?

So I managed to arrange for someone to pick up the pigs tomorrow, I'm keeping Baby and Hooligan back because they're old and friends. I unloaded the truck, which took 2 days and a furniture dolly (boxes of clay are roughly 40-50lbs and I just couldn't lift them the first couple days). I went in to my specialists appointment and they eventually gave me a bed to lie down on since I couldn't sit as long as I needed to without my head supported.

In February I'd ordered chicks with a friend and we got the reminder email last week, but I somehow thought they were coming next Sunday. Well, yesterday-Sunday she messaged me to ask where at the airport to pick them up. So yesterday I cleaned out the bottom chicken coop (6 wheelbarrows of light bedding) so I can move the silkies over into it so I can put the chicks to brood in the quail house. The quail house bedding is moister, so heavier, and I need to move everyone over at night when they're sleeping, so it'll be a couple days. Meanwhile the babies are brooding downstairs in a giant rubbermaid tub brooder on the sofa. Little Bear is interested but there's lots else going on.

When your memory sucks every day is a surprise.

I also had a talk with my supervisor, who-- you know, I think I need a lot more words to say "it's still bad and I don't get to see my doctor till after the leave is over because Healthcare so I can't really plan at this point"

A friend brought me by soup and bread. Another friend helped me out financially. I feel safe, and I feel like I shouldn't feel safe.

I haven't had capacity to do pottery yet. That's hard. Because I can do only one or two things a day I need to have food lined up and no animal/work/medical stuff, but because I can only do one or two things a day most days contain something I need to do, I can't get it all out of the way to clear my schedule.

My housesitter killed about half my tomato plants by number, and more than that by variety %. I still have maybe 16 flats of peppers and tomatoes, and I started a bunch of squash and leafy greens and re-started some of my precious northern cantaloupe seeds. I'm getting to the point where some of these I don't have backup seeds for, either because they're an F1 or a rare unobtainable variety or whatever. That isn't to say I can't get other seeds and start them next year - it's too late now to start more tomatoes or peppers -- but it's a loss. Turns out the plants started dying after a week and instead of messaging me to ask what to do the housesitter decided to wait till I came back to explain. Who knew what could have been saved in that time?

She also, like every human to enter my house without intimate knowledge and care for me, threw out the "rotten" tomatoes in a bowl on the counter -- my seed tomatoes that the parent plant is now dead, so that line's done -- and I'm pretty sure fed one of my prosciuttos ("moldy cheese") to the pigs to get them in the pen when they got out, and despite very very very careful instructions to take only the meat from the downstairs bedroom freezer (which had frozen and thawed) to lure the pigs in used the gorgeous salmon Josh brought me from the freezer in the carport instead.

A ton of things in my house are unique, irreplaceable, and don't make a lot of sense to people without exposure to the concepts behind them. When people visit and try to be well-meaning (and don't have unique homes of their own) generally irreplaceable or hundreds of dollars worth of stuff gets destroyed. Other people's houses are frequently inexplicable to me but I don't think I destroy stuff like that? I've finally got mom trained, pretty much, and Tucker and Josh understand. But it's frustrating and I think it's yet another reason I wish I had more space-- space to entertain separate from the living space which contains what I do with my time everyday.

Anyhow, that aside we've had good rain on and off, more than we've had in awhile. I'm hardening off my tomatoes. Something on my back deck eats lettuce but all the leafy greens other than lettuce I planted out there before I left are doing well. I have a silkie - looks like a giant white cottonball -- who can somehow hide effectively in an empty field. Little Bear had his first shots, is microchipped, and will shortly be fixed and I have a vet. Every time Little Bear goes to the vet they exclaim "he's such a delightful cat" so who knows what happens back there.

I need to get the wherewithal together to till my garden but we still have some lows in the forecast, even though the actual temps have been turning out very high. With the loss of so many tomatoes I started a sweet corn grex. My southmost garden is now fully planted, more or less, and waits only for a path and little greenhouse. It's woody perennials, needs underplanting with herbacious, but still. Has lots of haskap, hardy cherry, ribes, elderberry, etc and lots of blossoms this year.

Some apple seedlings from last year survived -- I knew my winter would kill some, since those seeds are from california -- and I'd like to catalogue them when I have wherewithal. I sorted through my seeds and put away anything I'm definitely not growing this year (missed the favas window, pulled out individual squash seeds, chose my corn path, put away the tomatoes and peppers, etc) so I only have a single dairy crate of seeds left out that I'll be putting in. The year is shaping up.

Every night Little Bear stalks me up to bed and settles in with me and Whiskey.

Solly has been sleeping in the muddy stream to keep cool, and here I thought she was just getting out.

The goose nests were eaten by the pigs when I was gone, but there might be a couple they missed.

The ambient temperature here varies between 10-27C indoors and 4-25Coutdoors (barring a little frost here and there) and is comfortable open window weather. Somehow n Vancouver a much smaller range was sticky and both too warm and too cold.

I'm not strong enough right now to unscrew the hard-water-encrusted thingers under the sink tap so I may need to hire the job out, annoying when I know exactly what I need to do but less annoying than not having running water in the bathroom sink.

I'm slowly sorting through "what if rest doesn't increase my capacity, it just maintains it, and I'm like this now". So: instead of telling a friend I can go for a walk with them, I would probably invite them over? So: I need to plan my systems much better and more efficiently. So: I need a cart so I'm not using the same wheelbarrow for chicken manure and bringing groceries in from the truck?

Threshold loves me. I love being here. All that, good and bad, and things are ok.

The psychologist I was referred to asked twice if I had things I enjoyed, hobbies, etc. Of course they want to steer me towards depression. The first time I just said yes. The second time I said "Yes, tons of stuff, the best is my tomato breeding program where I'm finally into the F2, so after 3 years of work I get to see the results finally, to see it opening out into a whole bunch of possibility-- and of course we're starting the little pottery studio in town, and there's a garden club" and I think he finally believed me. But it's hard for people to believe, I think.

If you're disabled you're supposed to be dissatisfied, unhappy. If you cure the unhappiness you're supposed to cure the disease, too, especially in "women". I have pain sometimes and a weird lack of function other times, enough that apparently I'm setting my jaw hard to get myself through things and have worn through the disc on both sides, which is what's causing the ear pain? But I'm happy. It's very possible to be in pain and also to be happy. And it's obviously possible to not do everything you want to do and still be happy, because in this near-infinite world how could anyone ever be happy otherwise?

Loving my life, and living in a life I love, has always been my most radical and least-understood act. Even when it's hard and it hurts and it's lonely. Even when it's not safe because of course it's never safe. Even when, even when.

I've been sitting up typing for 40 minutes now. The rain has restarted outside. I need to lie back down. Two cats are sleeping on the foot of the bed. Sometime later I'll go out and clear out another third of the bedding in the quail shed, or maybe do some pottery, or maybe do a run into town for more chick starter. I'll not chain multiple activities together, I'm learning that. And things will, for now, be ok.

( Tired of medical stuff? I sure am. )

In other news I potted up my F2 heirloom mini x baby jade seedlings, there's time nice variation there. I set up some lights in the basement after clearing out some of my closet for pottery supplies (the closet is right next to the wheel). After those tomatolets and some of the peppers got potted up I ran out of shelving, so I need more shelving to set up more lights on. I'd been going to put them in the nutri-tower but I can't find the clippies to set it up.

I need to replant one set of peppers, and finish winnowing down which tomatoes I'm planting this year. I'm down to 70 varieties, which is pretty good honestly. I also want to remember to plant a bunch to sell.

Obviously I need to grow a bunch of the F2s I produced last year, some of my good favourites, some new quick red ones, and some new fancy ones. The F2s really need a good quantity of grow-outs so it starts to limit the rest.

Some of my micro tomatoes from the micro tomato project are forming baby tomatoes, they're carrot leaf plants and I can't wait to see what happens! They may have brown or large fruits.

I also found some carbon x zesty green F1 seeds which is amazing and I really hope they grow. They were in a tiny weirdly-shaped tomato and there are only a couple seeds, that happens sometimes with hand pollination and bagging.

Meanwhile the geese are laying-- I had sorted out a few extra nests for them on the weekend. They're adorable and I want goslings this year. Not sure if I want to incubate or not. The ducks are in spring plumage and therefore gorgeous. The silkies remain tiny and cute.

Woodstove is out, it's been warm and the house has been spiking in the afternoons due to the angle of the sun. It's supposed to be cold the next little while so although I've cleaned the chimney I need to clean the ash box and maybe start another fire or two for a couple days.

The government is already sending out "watch for burning bans" ads over fb and youtube, we're all nervous about the spring and fires.

There was a glaze fire Sunday night in the studio kiln, it cooled yesterday and so we can open it after work today. I've been seized by catastrophizing that my new glazes have run all over all the shelves and wrecked them. They're probably fine. We fired at cone 5 with a 12 minute hold instead of the previous cone 6 because the kiln was overshooting some so they should run less than previous, and I was pretty careful.

Tucker, his partner, and her kid are going to visit some friends for the eclipse. I made a set of eclipse mugs for them all, one of the first times I've worked to an idea I clearly visualized in advance, and I'm very curious to see how they come out. It takes skill to be very deliberate in a creation like this and I'm still only building skill slowly and in slow kilnload-by-kilnload iterations.

I haven't been able to throw in awhile, it seems like an exceptionally bad idea with the migraine hanging over everything, so I have some ideas piling up.

Today I'm still getting visual artifacts but am in much less incipient pain so yay! And also bad to work. Oh well.

Big update infodump I guess. I think I'd be writing more if screens weren't so weird and uncomfy. Maybe I should start vlogging or something. Is there an audio equivalent?

I planted some morden corn seed, saved from last year, yesterday. I also put in some zucchini seeds.

I've made a chart with all the sections of my garden so I can record when I water them. Hopefully I can set up an automatic timer on some of them soon. It's a lot of work just moving the sprinkler and connecting to the soaker hoses sequentially.

Today I put some asparagus seedlings in the ground in the tomato field, next to my row of apple trees.

The soil around the tomatoes was really warm yesterday. I'd like to get some mulch around them. I'm a little conflicted about whether to use compost, straw, or aspen chips. A combination of chips and compost seems to make sense, but straw is easier.

Did I mention my gaspe corn is tasselling? It doubles in size every time I water it, which indicates I should likely be watering more, but here we are. It was planted roughly 5 weeks ago.

Aside from planting corn something like 7 weeks before a potential first frost, I've also inadvisably put a copy of my F1 tomato crosses into aerogardens. This is the point where it's clear that they are not microdwarf tomatoes.

I was going to do pottery this morning but the person with the key is in Mexico for a couple weeks. Back to the dilemma, do I set up the nutrigarden or the pottery wheel?

I planted sixty tomatoes last night, mostly promiscuous and blacks but also my 16 grocery store green F2s. Greens and reds are mostly already planted. More blacks, some sibling promiscuous, and some "weird" colours still need to be done.

The smoke was coming in last night, not high where the sun turns orange but low where the sky is still blue but it moves like mist along the ground and smells like a neighbour's bonfire all day. Today, thank goodness, it's gone. My air filters have not yet arrived and I haven't yet cleaned up the dust from downstairs.

Somehow I've gone from being energized by the sun all my life to being sick and weird-feeling when I'm out in it even in the late afternoon. I've been gardening between 7 and 9:30pmish, because I just do not feel well if I go out otherwise. I have a Dr's appointment next month; I need to bring my list of symptoms and push for whatever the next thing is because I still don't have enough memory to advocate for myself in a visit like that without notes. Sinus infection still present: eyes hurt, shoulders and neck hurt, on top of the normal sinus places. Not sure if the stabbing headache I've had for the last week and a half is related. Things just hurt, dammit.

I don't work tomorrow. I may stay out late and plant things; this is about as late as I want to push that.

It's supposed to be cold on the weekend. I want to do some pottery, and maybe I will. I am feeling significantly more emotionally regulated now than I was yesterday; I assume that was a medication wobble, or maybe I took some steps to reach out and chat with folks and that helped with my sense of connection.

Canada is doing an education grant for all citizens, regardless of income: $3500 for selected "futurizing the workplace" type courses. A couple are website design for small business owners, which I might do to out out some of my soap, random cool animal bones, maybe random pottery, and meat in season - I have a website sketched up but the last time I did the internet it was all straight html, so. There's also a nice drone program or two -- good for work - one on autism (not sure how good it is), some things like the basics of plumbing which would be ultra useful, and -- well, I just like taking online classes, so this is neat. But it would be good to get a website up. I think we have 2 years to use up the grant funding.

Oh right, I also need to put some mushrooms in my logs. Tonight is pottery, so this might be a late night, or an early morning tomorrow if I'm trying to avoid the sun.

The geese and especially ducks are growing super fast (the babies, I mean). It's unreal how much they eat, poop, and grow. The chicks in there are a little more civilized.

I had a tap installed in the south wall of my house when the plumber was here, and now I realize I have water there. I should* put a lean-to greenhouse against the south side of the house, where it will broil and be great for tomatoes and peppers, slightly insulate the water side of my foundation, etc. In the meantime I should put pots of tomatoes along that side, they'll be easy to water (before I had to wrap the hose around the house) and do well in the heat.

I have a bunch of my seedling apples in the ground, about 18" apart. Will be interesting to see what survives the winter. These are the edholm seedlings: "early OP", "Oct OP", "Wickson OP" and "red flesh OP". There's no real way of knowing what they crossed with, though there are a ton of interesting things on his land, and only Wickson is a reliably hardy parent. I figure I'll just replace any that die with new seedlings every year until I have no more gaps. But anyhow, that's why I thnk the 18" spacing for full-sized apple trees is ok.

My named apples planted in the orchard are doing well. All the crabapples are flowering.

I'd like to make a bunch of tags, one for each tree, out of clay. Just one more project, besides the poetry tumblers and the seed storage jars and the plates. Good thing winter exists?

It's dry dry dry here. The "poker ride" (something about riding around the trails on ATVs and poker hands?) was cancelled because those hot engines on the vegetation can start fires when it's this dry. Thank goodness for my well and for that little bit of rain the other night, but still.

PDA is kicking my butt in so many places. I have pictures and last year's text for piglets, I need to put up excess pigs for sales. Also something course degree something mumble oof.

The folks in Smithers who were looking to share their property let me know about a job in that area. I guess that's also an option if I wanted to move, which I don't really. The more apples I plant, the more I know that when my dogs leave the trees won't survive unless they're big enough to survive moose predation.

60 "kinds" of tomato/360 individuals planted today ("kind" includes categories like "promiscuous 2022", specific varieties, and F1/F2/F3 groups"). I ran out of labels so the rest go in tomorrow; those will be currants, extra earlies, greens, and a few blacks. It's such a nice mix of known quantities, new known varieties, my own crosses which are complete unknowns, and complete unknowns brought in from elsewhere.

kind | number of plants

#2 promisc orange 6
atomic sunset 2
bayou moon 2
big green dwarf 2
big hill 6
black strawberry 2
boronia 2
brad's atomic grape 2
brown and black boar 2
bundaberg rumball 2
chinook 2
chocolate champion 2
cowboy 2
emerald city 2
exserted orange 2021 12
finger lakes long 6
finger lakes round 6
grocery store green F2 18
gunmetal grey 2
jd's special c-tex 2
karma apricot 2
karma miracle 6
karma miracle x sweet cheriette (NE) F1 6
karma peach 2
karma pink 2
karma purple multiflora 4
karma purple x silvery fir (NE) F1 6
kiss the sky 2
longhorn 2
mark reed's large 4
maya & sion's airdrie special 2
mikado black 2022 6
minsk early x zesty green F1 6
moonstone 2
native sun 2
polaris 2
promisc "a" early-mid Aug 2021 48
promisc #2 6
promisc bh series 6
promisc gone to seed 12
promisc green freckles 6
promisc orange/red bicolour 12
promisc q-series 6
promisc tasty firm bicolour 12
promisc weird green berry tropical 18
promisc wildling 6
promiscuous 2022 30
ron's carbon copy (2021) 2
rozovaya bella (2021) 2
ruby slippers 2
saucy mary 3
silvery fir x mikado black F1 6
sugary pounder 2
sweet baby jade 2
sweet baby jade x unknown mini F1 6
taiga 6
uluru ochre 3
uluru ochre x mikado black F1 6
yellow brick road 2
zesty green x silvery fir F1 6
zesty small green 12