Oddities and a question
G'day all!
Not much knitting to show off at present - a sock that I keep forgetting to take a pic of and the toe of a Lenore (which is a top down sock pattern but of course I am knitting it the wrong way up :-). The yarn I am using for Lenore is *fantastic* - wish I knew what it is exactly. All I know is that I bought it at My Sister Knits in Colorado and it was a Hand Artist yarn. I don't think Casbah had been released then and it also doesn't have the slight sheen that my labelled skein of Casbah has. It might just be superwash wool.
Instead I have to regale you with some oddities and a question.
Let's get the question out of the way.
When your neighbours are having a stand-up barney, with slapping involved, across the way from you, what do you do? What do you do when they have such fights a couple of times a week? Last night we nearly called 911 cos it was getting pretty bad. It upsets us cos who wants to have a couple having a screaming match that occasionally gets physical outside your door? They are scroats and do not fit in with the rest of the neighbours, who tend to be young professionals and more likely to party and talk loudly on their mobiles than to face up on their patios and have a right row. We don't know how to approach them and heck, even if they keep it indoors, we still hear it all anyway. Our next door neighbours just turn the music up some, which annoys us more cos our place vibrates.
On to nicer things. Or maybe not.
Recently I've had a lot of earwax. My ears normally are not waxy at all. Not even during my deaf period earlier this year. So I am in the shower cleaning my ears. I felt something in the canal with a pinky nail (anyone who knows me can now be grossed out by my little finger nails - they are very handy and narrower than the others, very useful for digging in tight spots). Dig dig dig. What the heck is this? I pulled something out of my ear!
It was a petal from a cherry plum or a flowering pear.
LOL I have no idea how it got in there - must've blown in when I was riding my bike is my only guess cos normally my hair covers my ears but I tie it back so it is out of the way and doesn't mess with my helmet.
Now if I ever need to describe my ears I can call the right one "petal."
Anyway, earwax is back to its normal levels. Just cos you need to know, right?
Then a day or two ago, I had this stunning realisation - why the hell am I bothering to cut back on carbon emissions? Why do I care? I don't have kids. I won't be having kids. I'll be dead by the time it starts getting really bad. Why not be like other people and keep on driving the car as much as I like, use it for useless little trips, get horrible mileage out of it, make sure everything I buy is useless crud and brought from as far away as possible on a plane, etc, etc.
But I just can't do that. I cannot knowingly destroy the only planet I know has life. Especially life that I adore. I love watching the big fat black bee come to take pollen/nectar from the brassicas that I have let flower, the little birds fluttering from tree to tree, the butterflies, the redwoods, the native flowers on the hillsides, the critters of all shapes and sizes, the trees....
Having said that, if I can wrangle it, I will get on a plane and go to Maryland sheep and wool, and later this year we will be flying to Oz for Nathan's graduation (assuming he can fix all the grammatical errors that the grammar n@zi examiner has picked out, and we mean really nit picky things that only 5 English speakers on the planet actually care about) and possibly Germany for a conference. In return for the horrors of air travel, I will probably spend the rest of the year on my bike and catching PT instead of driving and buying locally grown vegies and eating locally made tofu (who knew that fresh tofu is actually tasty? I didn't. I thought it was horridly bland stuff).
I would share with you pics of the planting I've been doing recently but how exciting are pots full of potting mix? The seeds have not started sprouting yet. Hopefully we will have mini cantaloupes (rock melon) grown on a trellis along with climbing (pole) beans, mini corn, tomatoes, basil, capsicums (bell peppers). (As an aside, can you believe that the herb and seedling place at the local farmers' market sells *single* basil seedlings in pots? That is just asking for a misadventure with a slug/snail if you ask me - $2.50 down the drain! You can buy a whole packet of seeds for less than that!) I am still awaiting the last of the cauliflowers to do something - I think they will probably bless us with half a dozen bite size caulis in various colours. I have some strawberries that I want to get a glazed strawberry pot for, though they'll have to share with some herbs too. Oh and some small zucchini. Assuming any of it actually grows.
And I must share this with you.
Yep, that would be a nice red (but not properly ripe) tomato. Note that I turned the date function on the camera on. I picked the tomato and brought it inside to ripen. It is softening up now, two weeks after it went red.
There's some more babies on the two bushes that survived winter in pots. Unbelievable! I'm a bit worried that they may have overwintered some diseases too - we'll have to wait and see.
anon!
Not much knitting to show off at present - a sock that I keep forgetting to take a pic of and the toe of a Lenore (which is a top down sock pattern but of course I am knitting it the wrong way up :-). The yarn I am using for Lenore is *fantastic* - wish I knew what it is exactly. All I know is that I bought it at My Sister Knits in Colorado and it was a Hand Artist yarn. I don't think Casbah had been released then and it also doesn't have the slight sheen that my labelled skein of Casbah has. It might just be superwash wool.
Instead I have to regale you with some oddities and a question.
Let's get the question out of the way.
When your neighbours are having a stand-up barney, with slapping involved, across the way from you, what do you do? What do you do when they have such fights a couple of times a week? Last night we nearly called 911 cos it was getting pretty bad. It upsets us cos who wants to have a couple having a screaming match that occasionally gets physical outside your door? They are scroats and do not fit in with the rest of the neighbours, who tend to be young professionals and more likely to party and talk loudly on their mobiles than to face up on their patios and have a right row. We don't know how to approach them and heck, even if they keep it indoors, we still hear it all anyway. Our next door neighbours just turn the music up some, which annoys us more cos our place vibrates.
On to nicer things. Or maybe not.
Recently I've had a lot of earwax. My ears normally are not waxy at all. Not even during my deaf period earlier this year. So I am in the shower cleaning my ears. I felt something in the canal with a pinky nail (anyone who knows me can now be grossed out by my little finger nails - they are very handy and narrower than the others, very useful for digging in tight spots). Dig dig dig. What the heck is this? I pulled something out of my ear!
It was a petal from a cherry plum or a flowering pear.
LOL I have no idea how it got in there - must've blown in when I was riding my bike is my only guess cos normally my hair covers my ears but I tie it back so it is out of the way and doesn't mess with my helmet.
Now if I ever need to describe my ears I can call the right one "petal."
Anyway, earwax is back to its normal levels. Just cos you need to know, right?
Then a day or two ago, I had this stunning realisation - why the hell am I bothering to cut back on carbon emissions? Why do I care? I don't have kids. I won't be having kids. I'll be dead by the time it starts getting really bad. Why not be like other people and keep on driving the car as much as I like, use it for useless little trips, get horrible mileage out of it, make sure everything I buy is useless crud and brought from as far away as possible on a plane, etc, etc.
But I just can't do that. I cannot knowingly destroy the only planet I know has life. Especially life that I adore. I love watching the big fat black bee come to take pollen/nectar from the brassicas that I have let flower, the little birds fluttering from tree to tree, the butterflies, the redwoods, the native flowers on the hillsides, the critters of all shapes and sizes, the trees....
Having said that, if I can wrangle it, I will get on a plane and go to Maryland sheep and wool, and later this year we will be flying to Oz for Nathan's graduation (assuming he can fix all the grammatical errors that the grammar n@zi examiner has picked out, and we mean really nit picky things that only 5 English speakers on the planet actually care about) and possibly Germany for a conference. In return for the horrors of air travel, I will probably spend the rest of the year on my bike and catching PT instead of driving and buying locally grown vegies and eating locally made tofu (who knew that fresh tofu is actually tasty? I didn't. I thought it was horridly bland stuff).
I would share with you pics of the planting I've been doing recently but how exciting are pots full of potting mix? The seeds have not started sprouting yet. Hopefully we will have mini cantaloupes (rock melon) grown on a trellis along with climbing (pole) beans, mini corn, tomatoes, basil, capsicums (bell peppers). (As an aside, can you believe that the herb and seedling place at the local farmers' market sells *single* basil seedlings in pots? That is just asking for a misadventure with a slug/snail if you ask me - $2.50 down the drain! You can buy a whole packet of seeds for less than that!) I am still awaiting the last of the cauliflowers to do something - I think they will probably bless us with half a dozen bite size caulis in various colours. I have some strawberries that I want to get a glazed strawberry pot for, though they'll have to share with some herbs too. Oh and some small zucchini. Assuming any of it actually grows.
And I must share this with you.
Yep, that would be a nice red (but not properly ripe) tomato. Note that I turned the date function on the camera on. I picked the tomato and brought it inside to ripen. It is softening up now, two weeks after it went red.
There's some more babies on the two bushes that survived winter in pots. Unbelievable! I'm a bit worried that they may have overwintered some diseases too - we'll have to wait and see.
anon!
Sadly I have no advice about the neighbors other then to call the police on them when they get started.
ReplyDeleteYou had a petal in your ear??? That is seriously freakish!!! Our shouty over the road neighbours moved out: we're mostly old fuddy duddies who own our homes and they just didn't fit in.
ReplyDeleteI do try to be Earth conscious: I need to leave a world fit for Labradors!!!
CALL THE COPS. Just make sure to warn them that it is a violent domestic dispute so they can be prepared for the participants to turn on them instead of each other. Double Ds are the worst.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about the horid neighbours, I would suggest the cops too like the other commenters, should things look like they are getting dire.
ReplyDeleteThe ear/petal thing is just bizarre! Mind you there are all sorts of stories about things that are extracted from ears and a petal is pretty benign lol!
Your veggies are doing well! We've just got a strawberry pot that come with a built in net cover and holds something like 30 plants - strawbs are arriving later this month. Pot is plastic and assembled from flat sections but as we wanted a big 'un I think a glazed one would have been too unwieldy.
Deb has just had two cat hairs removed from her ear!! How weird.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your awful neighbours. Can you complain to someone in the building?
I'm just planting my veggie garden up at the moment. I've got loads of tomatoes.