Angry Red Chest

This angry red chest is one of the many reasons why I haven't blogged in forever. Sorry for the long and unannounced hiatus!

I've rediscovered fishing. I've only gone twice, but considering that it takes the whole day away as far as days off from my day job ....

Totally worth it. It was warmer yesterday than last time, and I didn't put on massive amounts of sunscreen like last time, so I got singed quite a bit more due to shedding of the jacket early and having only some SPF 8 protection (and apparently very spottily applied at that.) Where I actually had a decent amount of sunscreen, the pink has already faded. Where I missed, well, it's still angry at me, like pink Hulk angry, only without the awesome amount of muscle mass.

On my other days off I've been feverishly working on book designs for clients. Here's a big thank you to those clients! I very much appreciate the business. But of course business before blogging, so ....

And I'm still quite massively busy, but I managed to squeak in a few moments this morning for this burning apology.

Quick updates: Hateful Bob, our first chick to be raised by his mother hen, is doing fine, except for the part where all the other birds other than his mom pick on him. Poor thing! And, he was attacked  by a hawk, and miraculously survived. Hateful Bob is one tough bird. Side effect, the birds are stuck in the coop except for an hour or two at dusk, which they hate and I hate too, but it's necessary for their safety. I'm hoping to get out there today (yay, two days off in a row!) and set up some sort of run other than the little patch of dirt we've got enclosed outside their coop door so they have some grass time.

The four baby goats, Thurston, Ginger, MaryAnne and Gilligan, are doing very well and continue to be very cute.

House projects continue handsomely, which in sailor-speak means slowly (and carefully). I don't know about the carefully part, but we're moving along with the Great Kitchen Cleanup and the Decluttering Project of Doom.

I have a reading later this month in Hillsboro, OR and a presentation about letter writing in August for a library.

There's me, first in line, sans angry red chest.

I hope everyone is have a fabulous and angry-red-chest-free July!

Learning and Remembering

I'm still having issues with blogger.  I'm trying to fix them.  It's a frustrating process.  Hopefully, I'm more or less back, at least for now.

It's nice to be able to post from home again.

Still no Carey.  Our neighbors are trying to live trap a cat that's been hanging around their barn near their tractor.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up.  They think it's a long-haired gray kitty, but long-haired and gray mean different things to different people.  I consider the Poop mostly white, but many would consider her gray, especially people who think in terms of horse colors.  Just Google gray horse and you'll see what I mean, or check out the wikipedia article.  Our neighbors have a gray horse, so ....

In the meantime we'll keep visiting the shelter.

The kids and I went to the fair yesterday.  Long, busy, hot day, but we had fun.  I did book research while I was there, because I can't seem to help myself.  During the pirate parrot show, I make notes about how the parrots behave and look and sound.  In the horse arena, I watch the open halter competition and notice how every horse and rider have different personalities, and how some work together better than others.  I peruse the stables and stand near a horse (with its owner's permission) to reacquaint myself with that sense of living mass when you're near a large animal.

It's been a long time since I've gone riding, or played with a parrot, etc.  Our brains think we remember things accurately, but what we actually remember are broad brushstrokes painted over a main single experience supported by other less important experiences.  It's very diluted until you put yourself into a situation where your mind transports you back far more accurately and combines that experience with current information.  I'm happy I had the chance to do that.  And the Knights of the Realm show was a blast.  They changed the story, thank goodness, from the one last year where the unchivalrous knight won.  The boy took a piece of a shattered lance home with him.  He found the way they cut the lances to make them safe (although they had no eye protection--ack!) fascinating.  It's very convincing and spectacular at a distance.  I wonder how many lances (and volunteers!) they went through before they got the cuts just right.  Yikes.  I was also extremely impressed by the rings competition.  I think most people watching it had no idea how difficult it would be to ride at a perky gallop toward a line of rings and put a lance through it.  The 'large' rings were maybe five inches across, the small probably less than four inches in diameter.  They've had enough practice to make it look easy, though they missed often, and I'm sure it wasn't on purpose.

I'm hoping to make it to the neighboring county's fair.  It's smaller, and I'll see more of our neighbors there.  At the moment I'm done in, mostly from the heat but also because of my work schedule.  It's back to split days off, at least for a little bit.  With my one day off spent at the fair, the week ahead looks  long and weary.  At least we have air conditioning at work.  When I'm cool most of the day, it makes it easier to sleep at night, even when it's so hot and muggy that the kitties are still molten piles of fur at midnight with no sign of relief before morning.

Stay cool and check out your local fair.  You might be surprised, especially if you haven't been in a while, just how much fun they are.  And if you're a writer, don't forget to take notes.

SCA

Once upon a time a young lady went to a college and discovered a thing called the Society for Creative Anachronism.  She and some others were very interested, interested enough that they helped form a college group, complete with a seneschal, secretary, treasurer, etc. and made it a formal, official club as far as the college was concerned.  This group also created an SCA appropriate name and device and set to getting all that approved.

Many all night costuming sessions, archery practices, attempts at armoring, and a couple of children later, the now older lady is getting drawn back into the SCA by some very good friends, one of which hearkens back to those times of yore.  

It's back to the sewing table again.  I'm not hand-sewing this time, though, like I did my very first tunic dress waaaaay back in 1986.  Or was it '85?  And yay, my gambeson still fits!!

The Big Day Approacheth

Every year we have a party for all our friends born in August.  It's going to be much, much smaller this year, but smaller to me just means more chance to actually talk to people instead of working as a kitchen drudge (although kitchen drudgery isn't so bad--it's where the liquor cabinet is and I never lack for company/help.)

I made the required Costco run today to make sure everything is as fresh as possible.  I prefer it that way, but also, since we're going to have a real scorcher tomorrow there's less chance that the veggies will go flaccid when they come out of the fridge and the pop hopefully won't lose its fizz in the ice chests.  We have a gigantic chocolate cake, plenty of booze, plenty of bottled water, and some no-corn-syrup pop, hamburger, a lovely pork loin, a mountain of hamburger buns, brats, pork spring rolls, a huge Costco veggie tray, salsa, bean dip, about four pounds of chips, dried fruit and nut mixes, rice crackers, regular crackers, a cheese assortment (though no brie--Costco was out--denied!!) mushrooms for steak topping, frozen cream puffs, and of course the gifts.  Did I forget anything?  Tomorrow morning I'll make a beer, ice, and last-minute items (like steaks and possibly ice cream) run.  I'm sure a list will develop.  It always does.  And I'll have enough leftovers that I'll have to freeze things so they'll keep.  Nature of the August Babies Birthday Bash.

Somehow I managed to time it so that tomorrow is not a fast day, too, though I make exceptions for events.  Pretty nifty!

Time to go drink a ton of water.  I'm still feeling woogedy.  I was okay most of today but I took a nap during the hottest part of the day and woke up massively sweaty.  I've been trying to rehydrate ever since.

Take care out there and drink lots of water, no matter the weather.  And have a great weekend!

Police line do not cross

A long but good day today.  We went to the county fair and did county fair things complete with seeing just about every animal there and eating elephant ears.  I have a bright yellow elastic bracelet that says POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, the kind that are kind of like giant rubber bands.  I'm sure there's a specific name for that kind of bracelet but I'm not nearly kewl enough to know what it is.  Out of keeping with tradition, we put on enough sunscreen that none of us are sunburnt.

When I got home I put another 20 or so books into my library thing.  I haven't yet finished the books on my computer desk--that's all that this list is so far.  Some of them are reference, some of them are on my to-read pile, some of them are inspiration, and some of them were written by friends of mine so I like to keep those close while I'm writing.  Maybe the magic will rub off.

I'm so tired I'm rocking in my chair, not back and forth, but side to side and not focusing on anything when I'm not typing.  Time to call it a day.  No writing, no reading, but I don't feel like I've slacked off.  If anything, I bet the writing has percolated nicely in the summer sun and tomorrow will be a great writing day.  Unless I sleep through it.  A distinct possibility.

Morning sweetness

The little fluffy personalities are back.  I heard them first thing this morning when I woke up.  My bedroom window is open except in the hottest and coldest weather so I can usually hear who's up and about, whether it's coyotes, the hummingbirds engaging in their constant wars, the sparrows, the towhees, the goats picking through the flattened blackberry patch (yay goats!) one of our hawks, geese with their strangely mournful cries flying overhead, the soothing voices of content cattle, horses galloping like fools around the pasture, dogs barking at evil bicyclists or people walking up the road or horses going by or sanitation employees stealing our garbage or the mailman or the bunny nibbling in the veggie patch, or rain (and the scent that comes with it) or rushing wind making music with the leaves of thousands of trees, or the simple quiet of first morning light as I wake from a dream.

Buzy Daze

After running around for what seems like forever we're all ready for some down time around here.  But for other local families life is gearing up.  The baby swallows are out and about today.  They can fly quite well and one of them was even hunting earlier, but they'd rather sit on our clothesline and get fed.  I was able to get quite close, but not as close as I'd like outside and not at a good angle, so sorry about the cruddy quality of the pics.

There are at least five little birds.  The fifth one is sitting apart from the others and it seems more interested than the others in hunting for itself, at least sometimes.

They're adorable and I'm glad they graced us today.

Cedar Waxwings

I didn't know that cedar waxwings drank nectar.  The hummingbirds were not amused.

By the way, the plant is called a red hot poker plant (also known as a torch lily and by other names.)  I got the start for this one from my friend Jane.  The leaves on these amazing plants can look somewhat shabby, especially at winter, but they're worth having around for their spectacular displays and their magical bird-attracting powers.  They also are a favorite of bees and some butterflies.  

If you want a red hot poker plant give it plenty of room.  They spread slowly and steadily and are difficult to dig out.  If you want to contain one to a certain area, put it in a big plastic container (like the kind nurseries keep large trees in) and bury the container.  

By the way, slugs love red hot poker plants.  Start baiting for slugs in early spring by sprinkling some English formula slug bait deep under the leaves in a couple of places.  Don't worry about getting the middle--in fact, if you get some slug bait on the stalk buds in the center of the plant you run the risk of poisoning the birds should rain fail to rinse it all off.  Just lift up the draped leaves on the sides and shake the slug bait underneath.  Doing it this way will hopefully limit how many animals get into it.  If you have a lot of wildlife or household pets you need to protect, use wildlife-safe pellets or just put the regular slug bait under a rock or heavy pot.  The slugs will contort themselves to get to the bait.  If you don't bait for slugs you may get a lot of deformed flowers, if you get any at all, during those bad slug years.

It's easy to get starts for the red hot poker, or you can grow them from seed.  Divide the red hot poker in the spring (although you can get away with it almost any time of the year) or get seeds through a catalogue or from a neighbor.  If you want blossoms through the fall you have to deadhead the spent stalks.

I think I'll go sit in my garden some more.  It's been a beautiful day.

Knowing Your Plants

After a brief hiatus, here we are discussing Radcon 5 again.  

Apparently this panel has been extremely well-attended at other conventions.  Well, not at Radcon 5.  I brought an attendee with me (the unstoppable C.S. Cole) and Gayle, Gerald Nordley's delightful wife, decided the panel would be a great place to knit.  She was absolutely right.

Frieda Orsborn, my fellow panelist, had a wealth of herbal knowledge and she brought some magazines for reference.  I paged through one as we waited for others to show up (didn't happen, although two young men arrived, sat for a minute, probably realized we weren't discussing government moles, and left) and when Gayle asked about ephedra I got to laugh and tell her that it was being re-released to the public by the FDA and here's the article, enjoy!  (I do not endorse the use of ephedra, nor any other herbal product with a very few exceptions, and I'll explain why below.)

Despite the fact that the attendees of Radcon 5 weren't interested in the growing with roots plants as opposed to spy-type plants, we had a lot to say about them.  

For example, say that your fantasy has the characters moving from point A to point B or is describing village life and it sounds like every other fantasy.  You can spice it up considerably by flavoring your text with a healthy dose of what it's really like to  live off the land without modern agriculture and distribution/grocery stores.  

Your job as an omnivore is to be able to eat just about anything to sustain yourself.  A plant's job is to reproduce successfully, and there are several clever strategies by which to do this.  Edible fruit with an undigestible pit is a great one, because your seed gets distributed everywhere.  The trick is to not make your leaves and bark very nutritious or as many an orchard owner can lament to you, the deer (who have adapted to eat stuff that will give us the runs like crazy) will eat the whole tree down to a pitiful stub.  Other methods include relying on seeds that blow around, sprouting from the roots or tips that arch down to the ground and forming big thickets, or dropping seeds from toxic berries and letting those slowly spread your kind and being as poisonous as you know how so that hardly anyone wants to evolve how to eat you when there's a perfectly good apple tree sapling right there to nibble down to a stump (darn you, deer, darn you!)  There are strategies in-between, but remember this is developing with evolution and it's tricky to have totally toxic leaves and yummy fruit at the same time.  It's not something you can necessarily plan, as such, anymore than you can plan to have a boy as your first born without getting nasty (or lucky.)  

But I digress.  The point is that when your heroes head out into the wilderness, they need to find stuff out there that's edible to them that hasn't already been eaten.  If they're out there in the winter, especially in late winter, good frickin' luck.  Everything edible out there has been searched for and assaulted full time by the wild critters.  Also, think about hunting for a little bit.  We have an enormous abundance of deer right now (Kami shakes her fist at them helplessly from the house) and yet there's many a hunter with all kinds of equipment, including firearms, and all the time they can get off work, that will take days and days to bring home their deer.  Wild animals are great at running away from things that want to eat them.  So, your adventurers turn to living off the plant life.  They have options--pine nuts, certain leaves and needles that can make tea, some roots--but it takes a lot of time to find and collect enough of these things to get a halfway decent meal.  Yes, you can eat grubs, but finding and digging for them is time consuming and they're not very filling.  (If you want to try this, I suggest cooking them.  You don't have to eat them raw.)  Also, lots of green matter without starch is going to give them a nasty case of the trots.

Having your villagers wish for the first of the harvest in summer while they're picking greens in the spring can add a lot to your setting.  So can a real understanding of the cyclic nature of primitive agriculture and haphazard storage capabilities of a low-tech society.  It can also be great fun contrasting availability of items in a city where they have access to snow/ice year-round vs. a temperate city vs. the tropics where you can usually find something fruiting year-round.

You certainly don't have to include this stuff in your writing.  After all, folks read to escape the realities of starvation, feast/famine, and the joys of diarrhea.  But like I said, it can set you apart from everyone else and add some tension if you like.  

What about medicinal uses, Kami?  I want my herb wife to be able to heal my character who just got hurt.  I don't want to deal with infections and stuff like that.

You can do that.  But again, let's have some fun with this.  There's a lot of material out there with borderline or outright magical people who can heal heroes from the brink of death with a chocolate-coated magic pill.  The way to make things interesting is to take into account the guesswork involved in this sort of thing.  One of the reasons there are fewer herbs on the market than really ought to be has to do with how our bodies are only partially adapted to eating things that don't want to be eaten.  The gov tries to bring things down to the lowest common denominator, and therefore things get taken off the market or are never approved because an unacceptably large proportion of people are allergic or sensitive to what's otherwise a really good product.  When you use the whole herb rather than a refined extract, the chances that you're sensitive to one aspect or a combinations of an herb's profile of components is that much higher.  The combination/complexity can also provide more benefit than a refined version, or the components can cancel out the overall benefit.  Some systems, most notably the Chinese system of herbal medicine, maintain that medicines have to be crafted for each individual and can't be mass-produced for any real effect.  

Suddenly you can have a lot more fun with your herb wife as she hits and misses with your character's individual chemical tolerances and her local herbal availabilities.  Also, side-effects can be fun to play with.  Your character doesn't get an infection, but now he's nauseated, or groggy, or both and trying to fight the bad guy.

If you know your plants, you can also have a lot  more fun inventing poisons that don't exist.  They sound and act more nasty if you have reality to draw from.

We had a great time, the four of us, discussing plants and how to apply them to fiction (and real life too.)  We got a little bit into lore and how it develops (multi-use or very important core plants can become the center of an entire culture, even naming the people who use it) and chatted a bit about gardening.  (Why the heck is basil so hard for me to grow when everyone else can grow massive pots of it??!!) But mostly we talked at the edges of a really big topic, because an hour is not even close to being enough time to go deep with this stuff.

BTW, I'm always available to answer your plant questions.  I don't know everything, by any means, and I'll let you know if I have to research it because you may be better off researching it yourself.  But if your rhododendron is ailing or you want to know how hard it is to grow a camellia sinensis for tea, etc. I'm here for ya.  Know your plants.  Love 'em.

I Spy from the Sky a Slice of Pie

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Maybe even more.

This is our little acreage and our house with the slate-colored roof.  Tony's place is to the left and down with the red roof, and Tim's place is to the right and up, while Chuck's is across the road from us (his house is off frame.)  The smaller building with the darker, rust-red roof is our barn.  The line from the top right parallel to the right side of the pic is our east property line.  The trees at a 90 degree angle to the road to the right of Tony's house is our west property line.  If you put a straight edge on these two lines, they meet to form our southern (pointed) property end.  

The dark green trees are mostly doug firs, although we have maples in the mix.  To the left of our house are those big shade trees that are often in the frame when I take pictures of the gardens.  The apple green is all blackberries.  The darker lines in the blackberries are the paths we've cut through. 

That bright, not quite white area south of the house is the firepit patio.  The new goat pasture goes downhill past the firepit to the meadow (a subtle clearing with a round patch of trees) and runs east back to the property edge.  A lot of the original goat pasture is brownish--summer grass, not dust.  The only dusty (and muddy during the rains) area is the cream-colored line edging the barn.  In our driveway (which has a jog that runs off toward the barn) you can see a small, pale blue object--the Nova--and a darker object off to the side that's the Bruiser.  

The yellow areas are where the boy mowed and also areas I keep trimmed around the veggie garden.  In closer shots you can see the grape arbor, although it's not covered over this time of year, and the rosemary, but from this distance the only detail you can make out reliably are a line of trees--western redcedar--that protect us from the road a bit.  I planted timber bamboo west of them, but it'll be a while before that will be dense enough to cast a good shadow.  At the moment the only thing to distinguish it from the almost-identically-colored pasture grass is the darker (because it wasn't mowed) grass.

In summer the hike to the barn is not very far.  In winter, with the wind blowing like crazy from the east slogging through snow or skating on ice, it's at least a hundred miles each way.  

The dogs have a large area to play in (the green area between the house and the road,) but apparently that's insufficient because when they get out they all dash down into the ravine (where all the big trees are) and are gone for hours.  We're on a very steep slope, and even on four legs it's very dangerous down in that ravine which plunges into cliffs in hidden places, so we try not to let them escape and when they do I worry like crazy that they won't make it back.  Rumor has it that a herd of pigs were lost in the ravine.  That's where most of the cougar, coyote and bear reside.  Especially folks that have lived exclusively in urban areas would be shocked how quickly--in a few hundred feet--the territory around here changes from pastoral development to very wild with areas that are impassable to humans and sometimes impassable even to the animals that live there.

This is our little bit of the world.  It's fun to look at it from high in the sky.

September

I love the soft crooning of crickets, but when I hear them I think Noooooooooo, summer can't be running out on me yet! Much as I love cricket song, I love nights when I can leave the sprinklers on until I'm ready for bed, and then I just slip on some sandals and walk out in my pjs to turn them off. I love looking at stars and the moon on the deck. I love getting up early in the morning and working until I'm hungry, which is usually around 10 or 11am, and then I have second breakfast. I love the dry weather that keeps the grass tidy, and the summer rainstorms that sometimes come with thunder and that summer after-rain smell that inspires foolish grins and drunken behavior. I love the swoop and dive of swallows, and the hummingbird wars. I love discovering praying mantises, and as the season grows late, seeing bigger and bigger ones. I love the contrast between sweating in the hot sun and cooling down in the shade of trees with a glass of cold well water. I love working in my bikini. I like the way washing a car feels all sloppy and sudsy and dirty and somehow you end up with a clean car at the end. I like wandering the garden paths at night. I like the swarming birds that come after ripe berries and fluffy seeds.

I love autumn too, and the wandering feelings and intense rushes of longing it inspires, the changes and the sweetness of garden beds gradually dozing off like unruly children finally converting to that angelic stage (asleep,) but there's something special about summer. August is done, and onward to September.

An aside: I managed to stay up and watch the lunar eclipse. Once upon a time, as a child, it happened relatively early in the evening so that I could watch. I'd imagined the moon getting eaten up by blackness. Boy, was I disappointed. I stomped back to the house in a huff, annoyed by boredom. I don't know if explaining the whys and hows would have helped. As an adult, though, I had a good time marveling and staring. Maybe the telescope helped. Maybe it was an appreciation for all those subtle colors of red, amber, burnt orange and how they transitioned from the moon's normally pale surface that did it for me. I dunno. There was just something really neat about the Earth's atmosphere filtering the wee bit of sunlight that got around our massive globe to those burning hues, and the way the shadow's movement didn't seem quite linear but looked like it advanced and retreated in micro-sways, and imagining myself standing on the moon and watching a solar eclipse flare around it. Just like a solar eclipse on Earth, it doesn't turn to night-darkness, just a deep shadow like heavy clouds had passed over the sun. And I wonder, had I been on the moon during an Earthan eclipse, what color the moon's shadow would be on Earth. Would it be reddish also, paler because the atmosphere is so thin as to be non-existant? Would it be a neutral shadow? Would the shadow of the moon on the Earth be too small to see? Or would it be a fabulously perfect round, a cut-out shadow traveling across the world?

So I watched, with Rory beside me, and wondered and let my gaze wander around the Milky Way for over an hour, and afterward I slept so deep and dreamt about being an actress.

I wonder what September will bring.

Time Warps

Man, my schedule has been eating me alive lately. Not the work schedule--that's staying nicely at 3-4 days a week with quite a few stretches of two days in a row off. No, it's how I've been arranging, or rather not arranging, my days. It seems that no matter how I focus my time, something gets neglected. Yeah yeah, I can't do it all. But lately I've been trying to achieve a rhythm where at least the most important things get done, and it's not happening. Grr. Grr I say!

Anyway.

Late summer feels more like autumn around here. There's no rain, though. Sometimes there's a chill in the air, but it doesn't quite have that zip that autumn mornings do. Still, we're getting that autumnal/harvesty/winding downess in the veggie garden (go, my zucchini minions, go!) (winter crop planting time rapidly reaching critical end zone) and some of the trees are getting color in protest of the dry, not-August-hot weather.

In kitty news, The Wiz seems to have an abcess or a bite or something on his flank. The hair fell out (which is normal and good) and it looks--well--it looks terrible and yet it's dry and appears to be mostly healed. This morning, as if proving that there's no need to haul him off to the vet, he was tearing around the house like a maniac. So, we're keeping an eye on him. But not a close enough eye that he licks the eyeball. I hate it when that happens.

In goatie news, we're getting close to breeding time. The gestation period of a goat is roughly in the five-six month range, closer to five. The plan is to breed the girls so that we're not delivering baby goats in February or sooner. The trick is that prime breeding time is (in my understanding) around September/October as far as goatie hormones are concerned. This is probably because in nature (this is my guess) that the babies will be on mommas milk while the grass is still dead, and about the time they're ready to get weaned, poof, there's tons of green grass with the spring flush.

But I don't want them running around in the cold, and also I definitely don't want to be lying on dirty straw in freezing weather at 2 am messing with assisting a goat birth for the very first time.

Any chance they might breed in, say, January for a nice June birth?

I didn't think so. Oh well.

Well, it's back to work time. And this time I won't neglect anything critical. Really.