Talked with my brother.

His doctor's pretty sure it's Crohn's, possibly complicated by an immune system glitch and possibly complicated by a thyroid issue. (He asked me about my historical thyroid issues so's he could tell his doctor.) He's got a new med to try out soon; I hope this works.

He's muddling through. Fortunately he took light classes this semester, because the gods are looking out for him; the fact that he's been flattened with pain on a regular basis hasn't hurt his grades much. And his girlfriend is, apparently, a saint.

We talked about food a lot, for obvious reasons. But I made suggestions that I hope he can turn into better variety for his diet. We discussed limes. And parental stuff. And life. And gardening; I told him about my meditation garden and finding the Per Ankh temple and all. And the future; he's trying to decide if he's going for a master's, law school, working, whether he wants to stay in the DC area or live somewhere else, and all that.

He's up for going to the ballgame in August. Yay.

I like my brother. I hope he finds something that tames his guts soon.

Domestic Notes

Pitched yeast on my attempt at a lime-ginger melomel. Urgently waiting for it to start bubbling. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, patience, how long will that take?) We'll see how it comes out. I'll stop staring at it urgently and check on it this evening.

Not worrying too much about the outside garden this year, because we're trying a new method for getting rid of the uglies; teinedreugan went out and tried poisoning a bunch of them earlier, carefully avoiding the onion plant from several years ago that sits completely unmolested on that side of the garden. The poison we got is topical, rather than general, so I'm hoping it doesn't disrupt the land.

Lilac hasn't bloomed yet, but it's got buds up the wazoo. Should fish out one of my clean old honey jars for trying to make essential oils when it does. Cherry tree is blooming. The door-eating rosebush is putting out green.

Got teinedreugan to bring my large bag of sand (for miscellaneous gardening purposes, mostly) up to the mathom room, and put a layer of sand in on the bottom of my water garden tank. This would be because there's a cutting board sitting in the middle of said tank, and thus the bottom isn't even; this partially conceals the board and brings the level up so the other pots that will be there eventually won't be uneven. Also put a thin layer of sand over the top of the soil in the iris pots to cut down on muddiness; that'll be pebbled over later.

(Got the idea for the sand layer from the growing notes for a website erispope showed me, which has live Nymphaea caerulea seeds for sale, and little notes on how one might grow them that included sand. Someday, I intend to try growing them, but the site says they're persnickety. It also requires me to have one or more large buckets. :} They've also got incense resins, for when I start tinkering with that. Nice site.)