Virtual Realization

Whillikers, it's been a while since I posted! It was a busy June and July, since we had Jared for six weeks straight this summer. Good times had by all, and Jared learned some great tips at fishing camp that he and Jeff should be able to put to good use. We also had a great time up at the Beckers' place in North Carolina! With all said and done, I can just say kudos to all full-time parents out there, because wow.

I confess I've also been spending time playing The Sims 3. It's fun, but it creates a certain obsessive behavior in me that can be very, very time-consuming. So much for quitting World of Warcraft, which I was rarely playing when I cancelled my subscription. I just replaced it with something I now play A LOT. Which leads to a recent realization: my virtual Sim people are leading more fulfilling lives than I am. Seriously, they cook, they garden, they play the guitar, they paint, they write, they work out, they go to the park and concerts and movies and the day spa, they chat and have friends over and flirt with their significant others and get appropriate amounts of sleep. They play video games, too, but they manage to get all of those other things done, as well. Thing is, I'm spending my time helping them do those many things instead of, oh, say, doing them myself. Doesn't that seem a bit...wrong? In fact, maybe a lot wrong?

Maybe it's the dog days of summer that were talking to me and telling me to take a break, but I'm now itching to do more. At the very least, I should give myself a real life at least as interesting as the one I encourage for my fake people. So, I'm back on the workout train after an overly long absence, thinking about freshening up the house with a repaint or two, am eagerly awaiting my seed shipment so I can get the garden up and running in August for the new growing year, plan to attend my first sewing class in a few weeks and may just have to suffer the fingertip pain and get the guitar back out. I swear, if I don't learn to play at least some chords and a simple song this year, I'm putting it on Craigslist on January 1. We've had them sitting there for at least three years, which is at least two years over the edge of reasonable learning delay. Use it or lose it, at least as far as my own guitar of the three that we have is concerned.

So, thanks, Sims, for reminding me how life ought to be lived. Video games are fine, but not at the expense of my own existence. Life is good, but it's also short.

Modest Results

We're coming to the end of the main growing season here in Florida and can report a year of a few modest successes, some baffling disappointments and some lessons learned. Setting up the garden, along with the chickens, took a significant investment of time and capital, but the infrastructure is something that won't need to be repeated in the future. Knowing what I know now, would I have done things a little differently? Most certainly! A few of our boxes aren't in the optimal place, we still lack a box deep enough for carrots and other root vegetables, and the blueberry plants are certainly showing a preference for a slightly shadier spot. That said, things haven't gone too badly, all in all. Many of our early frustrations were related more to the chickens and their incessant desire to eat everything in sight, a situation we remedied with a permanent coop last month. Another frustration--small plants that wouldn't fruit--may have been related to our use of city water. We've switched to well water and rain water exclusively, now, and that seems to have improved things, but I'm not sure. Well water may also be the reason that our plants are dying early. Or is it too much sun? Not enough compost? An excess of squirrel poop? Bad vibes? Venus is transiting Cassiopeia? Frankly, there are so many factors that my head swims just thinking about it!

Still and all, we've had some nice produce this year. After years of planting the odd tomato only to see it fail, this is the first time I've gotten to eat fresh tomatoes from my own garden, and they're good! Given how expensive tomatoes are these days, I think we'll break even on the investment in the seedlings. Next year I'll be attempting to grow them from seed as a cost-saving measure, so that should be interesting. Our lettuce performed very well for the second year in a row; we definitely came out ahead there and I estimate that we saved about $30 growing our own (plus, the chickens get all the bad bits, so free feed there). Our cabbages were small but delicious. We saved a few dollars there and have bags of it the freezer for future meals. Chinese cabbage was even more successful, and if you need some I have bags of the stuff! Luckily it keeps and freezes. We harvested seven small broccoli heads, which wasn't too bad for nine plants. Again, the leaves and stems went to the girls to become eggs, so it's an extra win for plants like that. Onions that we planted on a whim are growing nicely, much to my surprise. Peppers of all kinds are growing like crazy. Too bad I hate them! Well, Jeff's happy and it looks like we'll have enough cayenne to dry and grind our own red pepper. Swell! Our English peas are looking iffy--another victim of unexplained early death. Zucchini, squash, cucumbers, cauliflower and a few other things were all losers this year. Maybe next year! Pretty soon I'll be digging the remains and planting our only summer options--beans and cantaloupes--and I have one watermelon vine still living. Pretty low expectations for those, but as I've learned when it comes to gardening, you never really know!

My Wandering Attention

Green living, gardening, astronomy, chicken rearing, knitting, Celtic history, hydrogen energy, baking, the Tudors. Well, it just seems obvious that this list would lead to my latest point of attention, which is . . . Steampunk, naturally. I've poked around it for some time, but I confess to a recent explosion of fascination with it. It combines my love of the Dickensian era, the brutal elegance of machines and old industry, ornate design, and science fiction and fantasy in a quite wonderful, almost irresistible way. It's fascinating to posit an alternate timeline that could exist if this invention had had more attention, or that one had come along at a different time. Thinking about it makes one realize how interconnected and accidental our own timeline really is.

Also, the style and artwork from this particular subculture is just delicious. Think "Golden Compass" combined with "Myst" and "The Prestige" peppered with the more curious curiosities of "Antiques Roadshow" topped with Johnny Depp's bowler from the very dark and drear "From Hell." Now add a fanciful flight jacket from an imagined AeroCorps of steam-and-sail zeppelins, a mysterious gasworks, a giant Tesla Coil and gorgeous nineteenth-century penmanship on a copper-infused calling card. Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm in alt-history heaven right there! If you see anything out there in the interwebs or art world that sounds like this, please do send it on. In the meantime, the ladies can have interactive fun with this little Steampunk costuming link: Clockwork Couture

I suppose the men can have fun there, too. Naughty!

And if anyone is at all inclined, I would very, very much like to have one of these Steampunked laptops. My goodness, who wouldn't?

I promise I'll get back to posting about our garden and our new chicken coop soon, but this is so much more interesting than cabbages at the moment!

Recipe Basics Sheet

One of my goals for 2009 was the creation of a "Recipe Basics Sheet," the model for which came from the Angry Chicken blog (link to the left over there). This is a single cheat-sheet with 11 recipes that I make fairly often. I know generally how to make them, but the exact ingredients or oven temps and times may get jumbled in my tiny brain. I'm sure it will undergo many changes over time, but it's nice to have a start on being more efficient in the kitchen.

I'll be posting some pictures of the garden as soon as it turns sunny again. This weekend's crazy wind was a killer, but most everything survived intact. The pea plants and zucchini are flowering, there must be 5 dozen different tomatoes working, and we have our first cucumber babies! This is my third or forth time planting cukes but the first time to ever get an actual cucumber on the vine. Very exciting here in Florida's prime growing months.

Happy spring! As always, click on the pic if you want to see a larger version.

Freedom Gardeners Site

Freedom Gardeners is an online community group of people trying to do more with growing their own food and being more self-sufficient. It's a nice way to get in touch with others and get advice. You can see our profile as a way to enter the site--just click on the title of this post.