The Raven's Roost

Thursday, I went to a county extension/UF class on veggie gardening for beginners. Despite the name, the majority of us had tried and been wildly unsuccessful with our gardens, so no one was really a raw beginner. The main thing I learned is that despite our efforts to amend our soil (it's actually just sand, we did a soil comp test and it's just sand) we're still drastically underfeeding the plants. I say "we" but I really mean "me." The extension guy also had a real gem of wisdom about citrus - feed them three times over the summer. I'd always heard you shouldn't feed them more than once a year, which may explain why my trees aren't flourishing. He recommended every other month until September or so.

I'll also be starting some seed trays today for things I can grow over the early summer like tomatoes and peppers. July and August are often too hot for anything, but you can start another round of seeds then for fall planting. I just need to think about how I want to approach my hybrid pepper project and where I want those plants.

Once the veggie garden is sorted out, I plan to start looking for a spot to put a beehive. It's not the right time for getting one, but I'll be able to find and prep a good place for them and start taking some beekeeping classes. Locally I can acquire bees just over the line in Georgia. It would be a day trip but probably better than trying to have them shipped through the mail.

I'm slightly annoyed by the tradwife trend. While it's making information on doing these things a little more readily available, I've been interested in self-sustaining practices, off grid life, and running a small farm for a long time, and suddenly there are all these chicks on Instagram churning butter while wearing expensive sundresses. That's just me, though, I always feel a little discouraged when some "niche" interest of mine goes mainstream. Not that this is exactly niche, but it felt more like a small, safe community of like-minded people, and now it's ... more political? Maybe more political, but it definitely feels more commodified, like a packaged lifestyle look than an actual life.

ANYWAY BEES.

UF's bee lab is open the first Wednesday of each month for tours. Of course, this is the science side of the university, so they maybe need to go easy on my English major self. I also bought myself a couple of beginning beekeeping books, so when I go to take a class or shadow a beekeeper, I have a better idea of what to expect and what to do.

It's muggy and hot outside, well before sunup, so I'll be doing today's workout on the treadmill. I have five minute threshold intervals, which can go very badly on gross days like this because the hot, humid air makes it so hard to breathe. I return once again to the joke that humidity is the southerner's version of altitude training.

Fox has a follow up appointment this week about his leg. They did an MRI last week, and hopefully he'll get some sort of actionable information out of this. He thinks that he may need to avoid using it at all, and that being told to do physical therapy exercises on it has prevented whatever is going on from healing properly. Space Coast will allow him to drop from the full marathon to the half, if he feels he needs to, and if he does I will do that along with him. I haven't told him that yet because I don't want him to feel like he's preventing me from doing something, but I also don't want him to have to run alone ... or to wait forever for me to finish. Going all the way to Cocoa for "just" a half marathon seems a little over the top, but we've been racing this one long enough we're up for challenge medals - I think it's "Mission To Mars" this year. And depending on how he feels about running on his own, can always use the fast & flat course and relatively light crowds to try to PR. I have PR'd at Disney but they can have some pretty bad choke points with all the runners, so it's never a given that you'll be able to run the whole way.

He helped me turn over one of the garden beds and I got my Everglades Tomatoes set out. I also have an army of tiny basil seedlings where the two bigger plants were so instead of trying to start anything I'm just going to let a few of those get big. I trimmed around the pumpkin vines, harvested two more pumpkins, and found another starting to form. There's one bed that I want to do pest control on (wireworms) before prepping it for winter potatoes. We can get two rows of potato mounds in there, which would provide us with a pretty generous amount of 'taters. I may also set out garlic, because I think the intense summer heat wasn't kind to what I started in spring. A lot of that is vanishing from stores here, because everyone operates on a general timetable, rather than what you can actually plant from region to region. It's probably great if you live in Ohio, but October is when we can really start growing things here. So if I can't find seed potatoes and stuff locally I'll just order some online.

I may try growing ube yams, too, though I think they're technically considered invasive here. But think of the desserts!

Today is mostly baking - sourdough sandwich bread, potato waffles for running snacks, garlic knots.

I noticed that I've worried and worn the left thumbstick on my controller to the point where it has no little bumps or texture remaining, AND it's starting to tear. Unfortunately I love soft silicone and rubbery textures, and will rub and poke them endlessly when I have them in my hands. Shopping for replacements is a bit overwhelming as everyone and their grandmother makes replacement pads, but I think a pair from Kontrol Freek might do the trick. When did I start using the thumbstick instead of the d-pad, anyway? Hm.

This came up while playing Okami, which is an amazing game and one I really wanted to play when it came out, but I didn't own a console. I eventually bought a used PS2 on eBay at some point, and a copy of Katamari Damacy, but I kind of forgot about Okami until it went on sale last year on Steam and Fox bought it for me. He had it and played through it several times and wanted to share that. So far I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but I got to Kaguya's digging mini-game and I am just filled with white-hot rage. When I do manage to get a Waterspout to shoot her up to a block, SHE JUST SITS ON IT. WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE GET UP AND WALK OMG KAGUYA. If you want me to help you dig up your whatever-it-is down here you've got to work with me and stop being ... YOU. So I'm off farming belief and demon fangs to upgrade my number of ink pots and to get a golden ink pot, which is supposed to replenish ink at a much faster rate. Because I get the feeling I'm going to be using a lot more brush techniques on this one than any of the previous mini-games.

I think when she is just sitting on the waterspout, I might be able to use Galestorm to blow her off onto a solid block, as long as she doesn't just turn around and walk back into the pool, which would likely have me putting my head through the wall out of sheer frustration. This one goes right to the top of my "Most Annoying Mini-Games Designed By Satan Himself," along with Hyper Light Drifter's soccer game.

In my IRL-farming-simulation, AKA my garden, I've got some food worked into the pumpkin and pepper beds, and the tomatoes that gave up the proverbial ghost in the heat are ready to be hoed under. The cherry tomatoes are still going strong, and I have another pattypan squash ready to be harvested. At this point I have enough of those little squashes that my next round of lunch prep may be curried squash and basmati rice. I should also save some seeds from that squash - it was a volunteer and it's turned out to be a vigorous, productive little plant.

During yoga this afternoon I happened to see my new Crow Bros hanging around the yard. We recently had to cut some trees down to get the new guy wires in, and one was a Red Bay Laurel that was sickly anyway, and for now we've just left it where it fell on the edge of the yard. It had some Spanish Moss in the upper boughs and the crows were gathering that and flying off with it. So perhaps the three I'm seeing are a mated pair with a helper bird - I've read that often that helper is one of the previous year's chicks who just hasn't left yet.

The weather's warming up, of course, as it does this time of year. My azalea bush is blooming but we're not quite up to its most spectacular display. I must remember to get some photos before the blooms all fall off. It seems like last year there was a heavy rain or something that knocked them all off overnight. I haven't quite got my garden underway yet, but I want to get out there and start tilling the dirt this weekend, then pick up a few starter plants next week. I've also got some seed trays laid out, but for some reason I never seem to have as much luck with seeds. I am going to set out more Seminole pumpkins, since those did so well last year. And to heck with "gentle" pest control, the minute I see something that might be a squash bug I'm getting out the pesticides. I'm not spending all this time and money to feed a bunch of insects.

But I'm going to put in a lot more culinary herbs this year. I seem to have good luck growing those, and with the dehydrator, I'll have my own fresh stuff to cook with all winter. I also need to plant new hot peppers, since the ones I had finally died over the winter, but they had a two-season run. Considering peppers are annual in most places north of here I'm going to count myself lucky.

On the very local, just me & Fox level, not much is going on lately. We never really stopped social distancing and lockdown behavior. We did actually make a brief trip into town today for some plumbing stuff - we're having some ongoing issues with the garage sink. That was a fun find this morning. I went to get my clippers so I could harvest more calamondins (another five pounds!) and found a big-ish puddle. He thinks he's got it fixed now, we're just letting everything set up before turning the water back on.

Eta wasn't much of an event on our side of the state. It rained and was a little windy, followed by some drizzly weather this morning. The weather station on the tower recorded the highest wind gust at 40 mph.

I'm still slowly working on Inktober pieces alongside stuff for Lora. All last week I was also able to run regularly without muscle pain, so I think my calf is healed. I'm not going to push it too much, just stick to my normal schedule for now, but next week if it's nice in the mornings, I do want to go run outside more. Except for the dogs - not sure if the ultrasonic thingie will do or if I need to buy a fresh can of mace. The black pit mix that's always been a problem is still stupid enough to get close and get a faceful of sneaker, and someone got a swarm of little ankle biters that are at least bright enough to stand on the other side of the road and bark. Other than that it's great running out here in the morning. Quiet. Cool. I've even seen a Kestrel recently.

Tonight I'm going to try to finish up the pub in Untitled Goose Game, then decide if I want to attempt speedrunning it or just go on to something else. I scrolled through some of the older games I haven't finished and found a couple I'd like to complete before starting anything new. I was about halfway through Broken Age four years ago and never completed it, and I remember enjoying that one. I'm still side questing in Hollow Knight, taking it at a somewhat easier pace since you can only play a game for the first time once, so I might as well enjoy myself instead of frantically trying to slaughter everything in Hallownest.

I've been slacking off on my Japanese learning lately so I need to re-commit to that.

The usual deer visitors come around in the mornings and evenings. I haven't seen much of the bear since we finished building the trash shed, though over the weekend I did see some bear tracks around it. Needless to say I haven't had to go pick up garbage since the shed was done. I just wish other people out here would follow suit - the bear is clearly accustomed to wandering down our road stopping at a few places where s/he knows there's an easy snack. That bear's going to get shot sooner or later.

Something was attacking my pumpkins recently, boring into the shells of the young fruit and turning the insides to brown mush. Since it's rained so heavily I need to re-apply pesticide tomorrow. I went with Sevin. Skip the "safer" stuff, let's kill some damn bugs. I sprayed it close to the ground and around on the grass, trying to avoid spraying the vines themselves, so I still have pollinators showing up. I even saw some kind of huge brown-black moth recently. I have several small pumpkins forming, so cross your fingers for me!

It's been an interesting couple of days here.

My futon arrived earlier than expected, on Tuesday evening, so I have had two nights of sleeping on it so far. I originally planned to put the futon on top of my memory foam pad, then transition to just futon on floor, but Fox suggested I try skipping directly to the floor, which I did. I think the futon I slept on in Tokyo was a bit thicker, but I'm actually not that uncomfortable. I slept pretty poorly the first night, but the cats were also driving me bonkers. Not only have I moved my bed now, I've got a different bed that's right on the floor, so I have really messed with their Kitty Feng Shui. (or is that fang shui?) But last night I slept well and I'm not suffering any ill effects. And I was able to sleep on my side some, so I'll probably get used to the hardness of the surface soon enough.

The futon also serves very well as a zabuton. Then it rolls up and gets stowed in the closet during the day. I'll probably want to air mine out once a week or so. During the summer it's too humid here to do that outside, but I intend to prop it up on a drying rack indoors and let the AC do its work. I'm also pleased that removing the memory foam pad has fixed the warmth problem I was having. Between that pad and the weighted blanket, I was getting incredibly hot and sweaty at night. Memory foam holds heat, which is probably ideal if you live in a cold place, but it wasn't working out for me.

We recently started repairing some fencing, with one goal being to get the garden fence in good condition before I start growing autumn crops. While discussing things with Fox he asked if I didn't want some more raised beds or mounds made over on the east side of the house, and suggested that with the tractor it would be much easier now to upgrade from a couple of garden beds to more like a hobby farm. So that's going to be fun. We're spending this weekend working on digging post holes and running fence, but mainly doing it in the morning and evening so as to avoid the soul-crushing heat of the day.

And finally, as I feared, the Wine & Dine races at Disney are cancelled. We re-opened too early, but no one was listening to that, and tHe EcOnOmY iS iMpOrTaNt. Anyway, we're passing on the virtual option - I'm not excited about the medal designs, and it's kind of expensive for a DIY race. Of course it's going to be much harder now to stick to my running schedule, so I may look for another, smaller local race. I'm also likely to do the half marathon that weekend anyway, and just stay with my current training plan. I'm just frustrated with all the nitwits in this stupid country - we could have actually been back open and everyone safe if they'd just stayed the fuck at home and done as they were asked.

I know people are losing their lives and losing friends and family to this thing, and I'm over here whining about missing out on an overpriced foot race. :/

Anyway, more fence work today. I'm also trying to get a couple of illustrations done that I'd started before getting going on the new comic. I also have a short thing I'm probably going to self-publish as a zine. Getting back into the zine community has been fun - I used to collect them! I still have a few, and just emailed some artists for copies of theirs. I've got recommendations for a printer that handles small batches of books and comics, and it looks like they will print my thing up for just under a hundred bucks, full color. Anyway, I've got a few more character designs I want to finalize.

My pumpkins are still looking good. There are three out there, one of which is on the small side but it's almost a uniform buff-orange color so it should be ready to pick soon.

I gotta go back out later this afternoon for a doctor appointment. I don't want to, it's rainy and hot and gross outside and I'm getting anxious.
( Just medical banality. )
I need to take some updated photos of my pumpkin vines. I was worried they wouldn't thrive out here. Now every time I go check on the garden I realize they've grown noticeably. As in, I might need Fox in the pic for scale. Last time I was able to say, "the garden beds are eight feet long, so that should tell you what size they are." Now it's like ... what garden bed. IT'S HUGE. And according to UF's ag extension site, they should start producing pumpkins next month. So we'll be awash in pie pumpkins. Which is not the worst problem ever. I can always can or freeze whatever we want for personal consumption and if there are too many I might talk to the guy up on the blacktop about him selling them for me. Or I'll just start randomly leaving heaps of pumpkins on people's porches. "Here, take a pumpkin!"
"Oh no, I couldn't just take your pumpkins you worked so hard ..."
"It wasn't a request. Take. The. Pumpkins."

So I might even get a head start on fall baking and make a bunch of pumpkin bread to stick in the freezer. Then I can just gift it to people. Here, have some pumpkin bread. I made muffins, too. How about some pumpkin scones?

 I'm going to go back and catch up on reading this evening. I haven't exactly been online a ton this week - not social media anyway. A few obligatory checks on family (who all seem to be fine at the moment, yay!) Obviously there are plenty of other things on Teh Interwebs to get distracted by, but that's no really the point. 

1). Went out and did grocery shopping today. I was surprised at how relatively busy it was for a Friday morning, although it was actually closer to lunchtime by the time I got out. Everyone's obviously pretty stressed and anxious, so I do my best not to get annoyed with people - they're feeling just as keyed up as I am. I managed to get almost everything on my list again, but was also - again - a little surprised by what's in and out of stock. Today's was frozen french fries. For whatever reason, there seems to have been a run on them. Also mushrooms.

2). I made a batch of veggie burgers that are chilling in the fridge now. I usually make a batch of between eight and ten depending on how much of the ingredients I have, and last week I ate the last one. Fox still eats ground beef burgers, and so I had two meat patties and no veggie ones, and I thought, how bad could it be? I really didn't feel too hot after that. But I also get to refine this recipe, which I like the taste of, it just had some logistical issues. The burgers were too loose - they fell apart when you bit into them. It wasn't a huge problem, but I wanted to correct it, so this time I made a point of chopping everything into a much finer dice. I also stirred the mixture more, since it uses some vital wheat gluten to bind everything together and gluten needs stirring or kneading to develop. I also let it rest for a bit, then formed the patties. We'll see how this batch goes.

3). The windows are open again today and will be for a couple of days, anyway, since a front is coming through. It's supposed to be 48 here tonight. Tomorrow I'll get some mowing and weed whacking done while it's still cooler. I also need to replant my seed trays. I overwatered them and everything damped off except the malobar spinach. Normally I'd take that as a sign to just buy starter plants at the nursery, but seed starting is seriously the weakest part of my gardening game and I need to master this. So once the cool weather passes again, I'm going to replant and this time not equate more water with more love.

4). Once we get past this pandemic thing, I am seriously considering getting the Japanese permanent hair straightening done. It's a pretty involved procedure, especially the first treatment. But once it has set, you're good to go. You just need to go back every so often to get your roots as they come in.  I've wanted smooth, straight hair for a long time, as opposed to whatever it is my hair does now. It's not curly, it's not wavy, it's just ... frizzy. So using serums and a straightening iron will work for a little while, but a few hours later we're back to frizz. And chemical relaxers are okay but they also don't last that long. Fox is on board with the idea, too. But obviously this won't be happening any time soon.

5). Weighted blanket update - over the winter, when we have the windows open, there were some nights where it was a bit too warm to be comfortable with the weighted blanket. But when the house is shut up and at a constant 76-72 it's actually pretty cozy. I also usually have the ceiling fan on in my bedroom at night. 

- "The Cat's Inheritance" is mostly finished! There are two pages left that I am working on now, but they're more of a coda. A few pages are going to be corrected (there's a mistake in them but I'm not going to mention what it is) and the website is still having weirdness with the way links and stuff display but I'm working on it. It's just been a long time since I did any of my own website work, and I've never used WordPress, so please bear with me.

- There isn't a single squirrel or bird in the front yard right now, and I suspect there's a stripey-butted kitty hanging around under the deck. In other words, I think my neighbor let her cat out and she immediately came over here to check out the other part of her territory. I wish she'd let me pet her but she's pretty shy of strange humans. (The cat, not the neighbor.)

- Earlier this week I got a seed tray started, as well as a container of cat grass. I put them in the server room where it's warm, and it's safe since we keep the door shut to keep the cats out. I have some more plants I'd like to start but I need some decent soil. If things don't get too bad out there I may include a Home Depot stop next time I go out and grab some bags of potting soil. I would like to get catnip started, and some flowers and things to make pretties.

- I am actually getting pretty anxious about the pandemic situation, but then I am also used to dealing with massive anxiety. So finding productive ways to distract myself is part of my standard operating procedure. The pranayama class I signed up for is already useful - I haven't even tried the asanas yet and just watching the teacher go through each one was relaxing in itself. He's taking us through a couple of "restorative yoga" postures so that we can create feelings of deep relaxation. The poses call for sandbags, which I don't have, but I'm probably going to wrap a pair of heavy books in towels and just use that until I can make some proper sandbags. I may just buy empty sandbags online and fill them myself. It's not like we don't have any sand here.

- Even though I haven't seen hummingbirds, I put the feeders out yesterday. Fox thinks he heard them before we had to shut the windows. We enjoyed our three or four days of spring, but summer is here now. Anyway, one of the feeders leaked out overnight, so I need to refill it - possibly replace it if it won't hold a seal. They're about six years old now. But hopefully I just didn't assemble the base properly.

Back in 2014 I bought some citrus trees - the key lime, being a key lime, died. They're fussy like that. The calamondin and Meyer lemon survived, and eventually started to thrive. You might have seen me write about calamondins in the past. Here's a brief article about them. They're also a sort of old-school Florida citrus and you can eat them whole. The rinds are oddly sweet while the flesh is much more sour. They're the size of key limes and just as tedious and fiddly to juice, but the effort is worth it, as they make amazingly good cakes and frostings, and I've used the juice to marinade both pork and tofu. Anyway, mine started bearing fruit early on, so for a couple of years we've had calamondin desserts around this time of year. But this past season, the Meyer lemon started catching up.



That's ten pounds of lemons.

Today I made a vegan lemon curd. It was absurdly easy since there were no egg yolks involved. I'll be making more, of course. Tomorrow I plan on lemon cornmeal muffins with crumb topping (again, the last batch was great) and possibly a lemon tart or something similar. The lemon curd was terrific on coconut vanilla ice cream. Although I had an accident with the microplane grater so technically the curd's not vegan anymore.

A nice lemon poppyseed bread might be good. There are some savory dishes I know I can make, like a lemon glazed tofu I saw a few days ago that suggested pairing it with brown rice and a green veg - it sounds like roasted broccoli would be perfect. What I really want to try is lemon bars but not sure how to go about making the crust as I can't find vegan baking sticks and I don't want the flavor of coconut in this. I'll figure something out.

So. Many. Lemons.