Shoobeedoo

Miscellaneous stuff.

Ostara is getting closer. It's a day of fertility, an egg day, a bunny day, a day to celebrate the gradual lengthening of the days. One fun thing about being pagan is that the holy days fall at regular, predictable intervals so you don't have to wait too long to party. One tough thing about being pagan is that the holy days fall at regular intervals so you don't have much of a break between holidays. There's always something to clean up house for. In my case, this is a good thing to get me off my butt, or the house would be a year-round disaster instead of a wave function of near and falling away from disaster.

Tomorrow is our tax day. I get to see what we made, what we lost, what we'll gain, and what we'll have to eat. It's all good. I'm glad we have someone else do them simply because I want all the tax breaks we can get and I could see it taking days and days to sort through everything. And I'm not sure my poor machine can handle the latest tax program. Poo.

This time around there's been less rain than I remember in March. It's easy to daydream about big crops and a long growing season. It's as much the rain and soaked soil that keeps me from planting early as it is the rain. In my mind the snow peas cover their trellises, and the artichokes form dense, fern-like mounds with several huge chokes on long stems. I see the grape arbor up and covered in grape leaves, large clusters of grapes dangling underneath. I see tromboncino squashes, and walking egyptian onions, columns of brussel sprouts and the rhubarb taking over a whole row. A random assortment of flowers spring up from a huge bed, seeds from last year shaken up together, scattered and covered up first by soil and then by a net to keep the birds off until the seeds have germinated. Stalwart corn. Rampant tomatoes. Twelve foot sunflowers stalking through the countryside, creating havoc and panic wherever they go! Mwa ha ha!

The Beaverton Art Media store is out of yupo. It's outrageous. Can't they see that people need their yupo? I'm wringing my hands at the terrible yupo shortage. Roz wonderfully gave me four sheets of the precious stuff. I refuse to hoard it. I'll paint on it, and then I'll go on yupo raids.
Or maybe just the next time I end up downtown I'll pick some up.
Yupo is an artificial paper for watercolor. It has the unique ability to both hold the color on the surface (after it's dry) in a permanent fashion while also wiping clean if you wet the watercolor again. So you can do things like make random patterns with a big puddle of watercolor, dry it, and then cut out a shape around the random area. Also, if you really mess an area up, you can clean it back down to almost pure white, and you can, if it's totally not salvageable, wash the paper under the tap and start over. I have more fun with yupo ...

That's it for this installment. Buy yupo. Grow plants. Be happy.