The Raven's Roost

Art & Drawing - I wanted to share an incredibly useful link I found - I'd never heard of the Etherington Brothers until a few weeks ago, somehow, but they put out loads of art and comics tutorials. Free. Here's about 200 of 'em. They also recently did Kickstarters for physical copies of these, which I missed out on. I'm keeping an eye on Amazon and eBay for used copies, but I also started stalking them on social media in case there's another KS that will let me get my filthy claws on these books. Online tutorials are awesome, and people who give them away for free are doing the world a great service. As they say in their own intro to their "How to Think When You Draw" series, with everything moving behind paywalls or to a subscription model, it's important that there be high quality, free information on how to draw. But I'm also old-school and I like actual books. 

I started yesterday on a new short comic, "The Cat's Inheritance," and I'm currently working on a "splash" page or poster type drawing for it. It started as a personal piece to help me visualize the scene, where everyone is located and how they'll move around, but it's turning out kind of nice, so I'm going to add title and artist stuff and maybe use it to promote the story when it's done. I'm also working on an Iktober prompt, "Overgrown," which has me illustrating a community in Muna where people have built their houses in trees. So literal treehouse dwellers. It's now starting to cook up a story about a hermit who lives in one of the outermost trees and would prefer to be left alone to work, study, and meditate, but unfortunately he's got a reputation as a Wise Old Sage and people keep seeking him out for advice. What's a hermit to do?

Running - Oh man I really did a number on myself. Well, maybe not. My IT band (hip) and calf muscles are still a little achey and stiff, but once I get moving around they limber up. I've done two recovery jogs - slower pace, shorter distance, and I feel okay. But I need to start piling up miles soon, because it's about 60 days until the Dopey Challenge, and I need to be ready for that beast. Now that is a series of races where I really do not aim to PR - the goal there is finish in an upright position, smile optional. I'm looking forward to the cooler weather so I can get outside and run. I suspect some of my hip issues are from coddling myself on the treadmill all year, and that I need to resistance and challenge of outdoor running to strengthen those areas. The treadmill's been great for working on my speed, and it's good to have when it's raining, or you're not feeling too hot but want to get a run in anyway. But I can see that I'll need to balance it with road running.

Gardening - I left my experimental compost pile dormant for the week, of course. So yesterday I went to dump more stuff on it and saw several new "volunteers." Two pepper plants, and a couple of as-yet unknowns. Possibly an avocado (!!!) but also could be ... I dunno, squash? I used to have a really cool plant ID app on my phone that compared a snapshot to its database and then gave you a list of potential matches. I should get that app again, it was dead useful.

I'm considering planting Seminole Pumpkins. They're a local variety that happily tolerates Florida's climate and they're said to be very good pie pumpkins. There's the possibility of having WAY more than we can eat, freeze, or can, but I will address that if and when it happens. There's a guy down the road who runs a small farm stand, selling peppers, berries, and honey who might take my excess, or I could set up a small honor system stand myself at the top of the road. Or just go around giving random people pumpkins. Hi, nice day, like you shoes, here have a pumpkin.

I've also spent a couple of growing seasons trying to get Sheep Sorrel to grow in pots on the deck. I like sorrel in salads and on sandwiches, but for some reason my pots never produced viable plants. Until I started wondering what all those "dandelions" are growing in the side yard. They're everywhere - paddle-shaped leaves, spreading, no flowers to speak of. Then I started looking more closely and realized I've apparently started "wild" sorrel every-freakin-where in my yard. So for whatever reason it won't grow in pots or in the garden but it happy to grow in the Floridian Hellscape that is the yard. Oh well - at least I have sorrel now.

Early this morning I spotted this narrow fellow in the garden. This is a Peninsula Ribbon Snake, a Florida subspecies, and they're non-venomous. We have these hanging around fairly often in the warm months. Yesterday afternoon we saw some Great Crested Flycatchers dirt bathing in the back where we've been starting to clear for solar panels. They're fast moving birds, but I'm relatively sure there were two of them. At first it seemed like there were four. 

One of my yard/garden goals is to make things wildlife-friendly. While I take steps to protect my food plants (though something ate my habanero plant ... WTF) I try to select native plants and provide cover areas. We're also not the types who dote on manicured lawns, so there's very little mowing, chemicals, or artificial landscaping going on. We do mow and weed-whack in summer because the ticks can be a nightmare if you don't. But we're not looking to be on the cover of House Beautiful or anything, and it's far more satisfying to me to see the local does bringing their newborn fawns around because they feel safe. 

I'm kinda giving up on tomatoes. I can't grow enough to make it worth my time to can and make sauces and pastes, and I'm allergic to raw tomatoes anyway. Yes, I still eat salsa by the chip-load when we go out and yes, I suffer for it, and yet I continue to do it because salsa is yummy. But anyway, I am very good at growing peppers, herbs, and flowers so I'm going to shift my focus more in that direction for the summer. Come winter I'll be growing leafy greens and possibly trying my hand at potatoes. I could probably stop needing to buy herbs at the store altogether.

 I rescued some plants from Home Depot today - hooray for discount racks, right? The poor things just need some water and TLC, and they were cheap. I got serrano and habanero peppers, some flowers, a couple of basils, and a catnip. Once I got home I put everything on a corner of the deck that will stay shady the rest of the day, watered them all thoroughly, and I'll look at transplanting them tomorrow. 

Notice I said I got a catnip plant. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that later in the afternoon I opened the front door and surprised my neighbor's cat, Jupiter, enjoying the catnip - even in its dilapidated state! She ran off, but just to go hide under the truck so I'm pretty sure she'll be back. I was planning to put the nip in a pot rather than in the garden, since it's a kind of mint and mints are very hardy and can spread when they get happy, and I'd like to keep it somewhat confined. I think it'll be okay, unless I start finding random cats hanging out on my deck, listening to New Riders of the Purple Sage and talking about how life is like, weird, man.

Speaking of plants, not to jinx it or anything but I have something sprouting. Back over Christmas we went to Orlando to hang out with Fox's parents, and on a walk around the neighborhood they showed me this palm that grows all over in garden beds outside offices and everything. It was dropping bright orange seed pods and they mentioned they'd never gotten one to grow, so I took some seeds to see if I could do anything with them. A little Google-foo revealed these to be Coontie Palm seeds (yes, that's the real name) and there's a specific procedure for making them sprout. So I dried them, scraped off the orange hull, planted them, and abso-fucking-lutely nothing happened.

Unnnnnntil NOW. One's put out a sort of fiddlehead sprout after weeks of neglect. I was watering and pampering them but I started to suspect a native Florida plant might thrive on adversity, so I just started ignoring them. If it actually starts growing into a palm, it will likely end up in the front circle. Coonties seem to be low-growing bush-like plants and I suspect when it's old enough to produce seeds it may very slowly self-sow.

It's 93 outside right now. I don't care what the calendar says - it's summer.

 After we had the new air conditioner installed last week, we noticed that the blower didn't turn off. At all. We eventually had to turn off the breaker to the unit to stop it. The crew had to come back because they weren't given enough metal to finish making the shroud for it, so at the same time we said they could look at the blower problem. Turns out that there's probably a wire staple causing the wires to cross, so he ran a whole new wire for the thermostat - which is easy to type but has taken the better part of an hour due to our house being special. I'm not even remotely bothered by the extra hole in the wall or the dirt, I already said to do whatever needs doing. It'll be nice having a new, functioning AC before it really gets hot, though, and we got in early. I'm guessing people around this part of the state will be turning their units on and discovering problems, and making the wait time for a tech that much longer.

I was kind of planning to grill some eggplant but I don't like to do that sort of thing while there are people over, even if it's "just" someone here to do work. I hope they don't over-marinate. It's a recipe out of the Thug Kitchen cookbook - I picked up a copy this week after it sat on my wishlist for a couple of years. Grilled eggplant with cold soba noodles. Bonus points: I read up on how to actually prepare soba noodles! You can't skimp on rinsing them. That's why the last time I made them, they formed a massive noodly clump.

I may go ahead and cook that up and just portion it out into servings for later this week, then move on to dinner - shrimp & tofu "drunken" udon. I'm basically a sucker for almost anything served over noodles.

I discovered that I'd planted a bunch of tomatoes and kale without noting it in my garden journal. I'm on myfolia.com - if you feel the urge to sign up for the LiveJournal of gardening sites. Well, maybe LJ isn't an apt comparison. But I have half a dozen each of two kinds of roma tomatoes and about ten Red Russian Kale coming up. 

Oooh... live AC update. It may not be the thermostat - there's a chance the unit was damaged. I'm glad we're catching all this shit now.

ANYWAY! Kale. *nods sagely* Man I'm gonna eat a like a fuckin king when this stuff comes in.

Another live update. It was the thermostat wiring. Everything works as expected now. HUZZAH.

It's also my DW one year anniversary. I'm about to re-up my membership in a little bit, and buy a paid MyFolia account.

Excuse me, sir? I believe this is my seed tray.



You know what? You're fine.

I smoothed the soil back out after the toad left. Most of that tray was tomatoes - all of which have sprouted now - except the three cells on the end where I had bell peppers. Peppers are slow to germinate anyway, and I'm not sure of being dug up helped them. LOL Maybe I'll just drop by the nursery and pick up some starter plants. I need to get datil plants anyway, since I forgot to save seeds last fall.

I'm also having fun writing funny taglines for these pics like:
I don't remember planting this
The harvest is bountiful this year
This is the last time I take garden advice from Kermit
ALL HAIL HYPNOTOAD
This GMO shit is getting out of hand
If Frog and Toad are friends, where's Frog at?
Should I lick that, or not?