What’s been going on, hmm…. Well, since March, Spring has turned into Summer has turned into walking home in hellish 95 degree heat by a lake them smells like piles of dead carp covered in maggots and getting bitten by a mosquito on my finger (finger blood, yummy). Ugh, it’s hot. The garden we planted down in the community area isn’t doing very well, but then again none of the ones down there are… basically it’s construction infill covered in about ¼” of dirt, so nothing is going to grow more than a few inches. That said, we do have a few sad snow peas, though the plants are now dying.

View of the raised bed from our bedroom window.

Since the dirt down there is basically sand and bits of metal, we built a raised bed behind the house next to our unit (they said we could) to grow tomatoes and peppers. Now those are doing very well; in fact we already have a cute little poblano pepper that’s growing about half an inch a day. Apparently plants prefer dirt over construction junk. Who knew.

Fainting couch from start to finish.

Let see… going back in the photo folder, there’s the fainting couch we recovered. Here’s the before and after shots. Not that the before isn’t so bad for a grandma’s bedroom, but we wanted something in the window of our living room for the cats and dog to flop on.

The beast (with dog).

Dog, you say? Yes, indeed. His name is Baxter, he’s 55lb of Beagle and unidentified other canine (Collie, they said), and we adopted him from the Humane Society about two months ago. Two years old, loves to knock people over, and his favorite chew toy is a remote control (he’s destroyed three so far). The kitties have gotten used to him, but I’m not so sure we have. Oh, and he howls, poos in the house, and doesn’t understand personal space (as in, it’s 90 degrees and the overheated furry slug won’t budge off your lap, no matter how hard you push). But, you know… he’s cute.

Goose family in front of lake Wingra.

Let’s see, what other photos do we have… random pictures of walks we’ve taken, through the arboretum and such. It’s amazing watching the seasons change in this neighborhood; there are so many flowers and animals and baby animals… I think it’s been a bumper crop of goslings this year, unless geese normally hatch about 20 babies a piece. They sure are cute until they start hissing at you.

Photos most random.

Garry has been looking for a job since school finished, but the recession isn’t making it very easy (apparently my mom has “never seen such a small classified section”). I’m plugging away at Anchor… I’m going to try and remember to bring some of my work home tomorrow so I can post it. The past few months have been brutally slow, though it seems to be picking up a little. I’ve been doing a little volunteer design to keep my brain from shutting down; last week I created a brochure, poster, and business card for a guy next door. I will be getting paid in “Time Dollars,” which lets you log your volunteer hours on a website called the Timebank and then get stuff back for it, like hair cuts and junk.

Anyway, going to try to start posting more. It’s nice to read back on what I’ve been up too, especially since I seem to have the memory of a 90 year old.

Ethnic Fest Artwork

I’m glad I take the bus to work, instead of driving. Not that we could afford a car even if we wanted one. But the bus is so much more relaxing; just looking out the window, thinking about the weather and watching the people on the bus. I like sunny mornings, because for some reason sun bouncing off the cars on the road makes me feel like I’m on vacation, which is a nice way to start the day.

In the Garden

It’s finally summer, and yesterday we heard our first cicada. The peas are still putting out flowers, and the head lettuce isn’t going to seed yet; I think because we had such a cool and rainy June. There are hundreds of green cherry tomatoes on the vines; I’m starting to get a bit annoyed with them because they’ve been green for over a month. How long do they need to ripen, really?

VIP Nurtrition Store logo

Work is good, or as good as any job can be. I think I’m more suited to working from home; being around people for 8 hours a day is really tiring. So I’m slowly trying to think up things I can do from home; I’m thinking if I did a couple of different things at least one might take off and be viable, like prints, freelancing… even refinishing furniture with cool painting techniques. Of course it won’t be for a couple of years, but it’s nice to have the time to think about it without feeling the pressure to make it work ASAP.

Chickens and a red wheelbarrow

The art in this post is a painting I did for my mom’s birthday of her favorite poem about chickens and a wheelbarrow or some such, a logo for some online vitamin store (I’m not overly proud of it, but I made it more because I knew the client would like it. Bad designer!), and also a thing I did today for this ethnic fest that Anchor is sponsoring, which I think turned out pretty neat.

A storm rolls in

Days seem to be flying by now that I’m working; I don’t seem to have time to do much outside of sleep, eat, and maybe visit the garden.

It was stormy and raining for about two weeks or more; huge amounts of flooding, and a lake disappeared (burst the dam) and took some houses with it. There’s a very cool video clip of the house just sliding away, all in one piece (until it goes under the water!).

My dad started his new job this week; for father’s day we gave him an abacus to use. It’s slowed down a lot at Anchor; we’re blaming the recession but I think it’s just slow. I’m making the most of the little projects.

A fresh green salad

I don’t know if it’s all the rain, but our garden is doing really well. Almost everything is thriving (our sole cucumber seedling never made it and our melons are iffy, but everything else is great). We go out pretty much every night, though there’s very little to do except pull a few weeds and I have to stop Hubband from obsessively watering every few days.

Garry had the day off today and it was also incredibly nice out (mid-fifties for the first time in living memory), so we made an effort to get out into the real world and not just go for a hike in middle earth.

First we walked to a fairly new store that sells running gear. We were looking for Superfeet that would conform to my crazy high arches, and it turned out a guy from North Face also had a job there, so he was able to help find the perfect fit (I’m a green E, apparently). But of course they didn’t have my size, so now Garry is going to check for them back at North Face tomorrow.

We then boarded the bus and made our way to Tenny Park on the near East side. There were quite a few people there; everyone was out enjoying the weather. I had a run-in with a porta-potty, we saw some happy ducks, enjoyed a selection of tunnels, and generally had a nice little walk along the canal from the park to the Willy St. Co-op.

Mmm, lunch

At Willy St. we picked up some lunch and two little baggies of sprout seeds. I would have liked to have gotten something for dinner there, but Garry was becoming bemused by the great numbers of hippies (he has a low tolerance for such things). So we escaped with our picnic to a little bench overlooking Lake Monona. It was a bit chilly (there’s still a lot of ice on the lake) but very nice.

And for dessert...

We caught the bus a block away and transferred at the square, and when we got home Garry took a nap while I learned about and planted my sprouts (they’re broccoli sprouts; I also got a “mixed salad” seed blend that I’ll try after). And I was in such a planting mood that I also planted some lettuce to grow indoors in a ziplock baggy (hey, I saw it on YouTube!) and made some modifications to the garden plan (as if I’ll actually follow the plan once we start planting). Later we ordered chinese take-out (it’s within 100 miles…) and had a bit of a BSG marathon (I think it’s getting a bit slow in the third season but Garry’s convinced it’s as good as ever). And that was our very pleasant first-real-day-of-spring!

This morning we took our children to the vet for their annual check-up. And it was quite a hectic morning, not helped by the fact that we slept through the alarm. But the important news is that the kitties are fit and healthy; well, except that Bailey has two kitty cavities that are going to cost $800 to fix, and he’ll have to go under general anesthesia.

I’ve been considering having us try the 100 mile challenge. We couldn’t be 100% strict; I mean, we would buy things from local bakeries, etc… but I would go making sure they got their flour from local… mills. I don’t even think we have local mills. But this evening we had RP’s pasta and bread from Clausen’s, both in Madison, which made me start thinking that if we can eat local without even trying it can’t be too hard to do it all the time. Plus the farmer’s market starts in two weeks, and soon we’ll be planting our garden.

Garden plan

Which brings me to the garden plan. This is probably my forth plan in as many weeks; but aside from a little tweaking I think this is the one we’ll use (especially considering I want to start planting next weekend). Tomorrow is Garry’s last weekend day off until the end of the month, which is really starting to annoy me because I want him to play in the mud with me. I’m hoping I can get him a job at Anchor; I wonder if they have a policy against family members working in the same building?