vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Max Gladstone, Wicked Problems. I'm surprised by how jarring I found Seril's dialogue in chapter 20, but I really did. Gonna... see how that settles out.

Skimmed a couple of cookbooks.

Watching. More Farscape. I am now having less "... what the fuck" than I was in the first half of season one, but I would not yet go so far as to call myself invested. (We have just had episode 19, Nerve part I.)

Playing. I Love Hue: The Dream/Dreamwalker/15 complete! Aaaaalmost to the triangles. Whereupon I expect to rediscover why I wandered off last time through.

Flight Rising: unwarrantedly smug about having managed to get over 1,000,000 in Shock Switch (and for extra \o/ I then deliberately ended the game before the server connection could have a wobble, rather than because I was scrambling to keep up); not entirely sure what flipped to let me spot and set up and exploit chained reactions, but WHATEVER I have Satisfied Honour and now can hopefully move on to something else. And: FIRST FLATTERY AWAKENING (Slumbering Charlatan).

Cooking. More East: celeriac, tofu and kale gado gado (BAD. NO.); saffron, lemon and almond cakes.

Ottolenghi: roasted red & golden beetroot, from the first cookbook.

Misc internet: Japanese soufflé cheesecake with yuzu caramel sauce, to use up half a tub of cream cheese and some egg whites. Delighted by this as a Novel Experience; not super likely to make again, but nonetheless -- happy!

Eating. A has been making me lots of pancakes. I have nibbled a nontrivial quantity of garlic at the plot.

Creating. Penelope's Gloves continue: I got most of the way through glove #2, then discovered that on this one I'm doing something wrong such that I'm winding up with the hand flap at a decided and unhelpful slant. And then I frogged back to the top, and rewound the yarn, and redid, and the same thing is happening again! DO NOT UNDERSTAND but deeply displeased.

In other string news, I have been gently working out what I need to do to join the two chunks of netting I have already made. I think I understand the principles but I am not entirely sure how to achieve the required tensioning.

Making & mending. I did most of the changing a punctured inner on my bike! (Got A to do the handling-the-latex-track-pump bits.) A then also narrated me through their process of unfucking the dynamo front light, which had been Not Working; the magic trick was probably unplugging all the connections, cleaning out the literal cobwebs, and then plugging things back together. (Possibly the multimeter scared it into behaving.)

An overdue Admin: the LRP job: updating the catalogue of sigils with which people mark their arrows. This involved working out how to replicate a stylised fox face drawn in orange highlighter. I am quite pleased with the result.

Growing. SO many seeds sown! Tomatoes (in the propagator) and peas (both at home and in the greenhouse), mostly, but also some pak choi and choi sum (in the greenhouse) and some kohlrabi and summer spinach (between rows of garlic). Hatching: BEETROOT (Touchstone Gold, two of eight so far, was not really expecting it to work, now need to sow my entire remaining seed stash for the purpose of building my seed bank for this particular cultivar back up while maintaining adequate genetic diversity); Sugar Magnolia (purple sugar snap peas), several tomatoes (Blue Fire, Orange Banana, Pink Dream), Kashmiri chilli, purple tomatillo. Of things not yet germinated, I am particularly antsy about two favourite tomatoes (Feo di Rio Gordo; Purple Ukraine), the aubergine, and two flavours of chilli (Trinidad Perfume, poblano).

Also still waiting for: three more colours and one more nonsense of tomatoes; several more flavours of pepper; all of the home-sown allium. Also awaiting the Kelvedon Wonder (sown in the greenhouse) doing anything, but again I'm less Antsy about that.

Otherwise at the plot: YET MORE garlic lifted and divided and replanted (I am at well over 50 plants at this point); the second batch of cloves I'd saved and put in the ground are actually coming up; and the bonus free onion and shallot sets are also poking their heads up. I have potted up the blueberry in the end of my bag of ericaceous compost, and should probably mix some sharp sand and coffee grounds together to finish topping it off.

Observing. THE BAT.

Comments

[flippac]

You're almost into prime Farscape territory now, but while the level of WTFery is close to stabilising (which doesn't mean it won't make you go WTF, but the rate and level of it'll be expected), there's a huge amount of actual story that doesn't really get going properly until S2.

Fairly early on in S2 is an episode that the "give us S5, dammit!" campaign named itself and picked its prop for, though. We got a miniseries, but as resurrected shows etc go that predated even Serenity and Futurama: Bender's Big Score.

[fyreharper]

What an excellent nonsense tomato!

[ewt]

My Trinidad Perfume took ages to come up, but now seven out of eight have done so. I also have several more aubergine plants than I have space for.

I will have a rummage and see if I have any Touchstone Gold left.

I haven't sown any tomatillo this year. It was delicious last year and is definitely on my "grow again" list but I'm trying to keep things relatively simple this year.

[kaberett]

I have a bunch of Touchstone Gold and I'm now up to 6 of them up, plus another 20 seeds in the envelope, so I'm fairly confident about managing adequate genetic diversity!

I am expecting the Trinidad Perfume to take A While but I am also IMPATIENT.

Extra aubergines: IF my batch of Czech Early germinate, which they probably should (just, y'know, being slow about it even in the electric propagator) I should be fine without. ... if they don't I would be extremely grateful for spares.

[lunabee34]

Yay bat!

[halojedha]

Do blueberry bushes like sharp sand and coffee grounds? I have all three, if combining them is a good idea

[kaberett]

It's apparently a not-terrible way to approximate ericaceous compost! I won't be using that as the main component of their Potting Medium but I'm very happy to do it as a top-up :)

[oracne]

Flight Rising remains very soothing to me. "Runestones Rockstar" is the games achievement that eludes me.