kiya

"Invite fairies into your yard with the ultimate HGTV Gardens guide to flowers, plants, trees and edibles for fairy gardens."

I. HGTV.

IHNJ.

Don't have one yet. Must get those pictures of the herb garden/landwight shrine done.

I am a massive burnout case right now. Attempting to control the downturn with lots of omega-3s and the usual accomplishing-of-things, which is made hard by the damned exhaustion. I missed my new moon ritual level of just can't cope; I should probably shower and do that after dark, a few days late, but I know it'll help if I can actually get it done.

I did get the rest of the plants whispercricket and teinedreugan and I dug up from the yard of the stray SCAdian last weekend into the ground, at least, so I won't be sort of anxious about how well they're doing sitting in buckets. The comfrey (which we got into the ground immediately) has recovered, but has also tipped over; I'm not sure what to make of that. It seems happy all fallen over? The periwinkle seems not the worse for wear. The quince looked a bit shaky, but we'll see how it handles it now that it has dirt around its root. The lilacs were in between on the 'coping with being in buckets' front; I wound up digging up some of the giant weeds along the fence and putting lilacs in the resulting holes. I'm hot and sweaty but have gotten some needful stuff done (also straightened up the south-side grape arbor, which was trying to fall over again).

... arawen is here semi-unexpectedly and now he wants to accomplish things. Heh.

I am slowly converting my yard.

Last year I planted phlox and lilies around the great boulder in the backyard. And the phlox came up twice as big this year, as phlox will do.

I sowed clover and wildflowers over the weak, frail, and water-devouring lawn.

I took the stones I dug out of the yard last year planting phlox and grapes and hyssop and started the base of a spiral with them, laying out the line with the charcoal from last year's Beltaine fire, and built that up with more stone from lover and friends, and laid in stone and earth and now it's an herb spiral, filled up with parsley and basil and sage and other good things, good dirt coiled with life and flavor. I have talked with the neighbor who seems mildly disapproving of my wild, wild yard but who loves her strawberry pot (and it is a lovely strawberry pot), and with the grizzled fellow next door who was trying to figure out what the heck I was building with all those rocks, but who thought the water-draining permaculture trick of the spiral was clever.

And the spiral's a little uneven, and so when I have my studio I will perhaps make an icon of Nefertem to sit in its belly, Nefertem who loves the flowering and the scented growing things.

I've encouraged the grapevines back towards their trellis, and tucked in some morning glories, and accidentally sat on one of the hyssop plants there, but it seems recovering.

I weeded out the right-hand planting box, and have mint and mint and mint to give to friends tonight. I have planted heirloom tomatoes where that was. I have decided not to transplant the spreading strawberries, because they already have fruit, and I would rather the fruit than the space; the leeks can go in the other box when I clean that out.

I have planted two raspberry bushes between the boulder and the herb spiral, in amongst the violets.

I have leeks yet to plant, and sacred tobacco, and need chives and chamomile to round out the spiral, and will have to get the beans and snap peas for the other box. And I should plant catnip, to entrance Fox and encourage away the mosquitoes.

I need a garden icon. And to photograph the spiral.

... I'll swap the music. Not the Stan Rogers I was listening to at the time I wrote this, but!

I made food from dirt.

Also, the corn is showing silk.


Signed,
just got a bowl of beans from the garden for teinedreugan and whispercricket, who like beans

My house smells vaguely of the process of making chicken stock. Alas, I seem to respond to cutting raw parsnips similarly to my response to raw carrots, though less severely; will want to be cautious with that. There's something satisfying about boiling down the bones; it's not exactly primal, but it's root. I come back to wanting to do things like this regularly, back to the root; I know I can go out and buy a can of chicken stock -- and there are several in the pantry -- but doing it myself has a certain raw satisfaction. I didn't raise the chicken; I didn't kill it (though the rooster down the street has been tempting that way of late); I still made as full a use of it as I could.

I have half the things that go into the veggie garden planted. I'm going from seed, so this will probably be a bit erratic, but I wanted to do it reasonably cheaply because the investment for filling the beds was rather large. Next year should be easier. None of the seeds have come up yet; both grapevines, however, are putting out leaves, one of them quite profusely. The tiny visible bits of the daylilies have gone from washed-out never-seen-the-sun white to little rich green cores.

I've made some progress on controlling the vast proliferation of heaps of books by getting some of them onto shelves; it's getting easier to estimate just how many more shelves we're going to need to have. I need to get back onto getting them into the catalogue, but perhaps I should assemble a landing zone first by clearing the piles ...

Today has been full of chopping things for stock, discussion of the equations for calculating the heliacal rising of Sirius, and trying to figure out why nobody on the web will tell me how many caudal vertebrae lions have.

And there was a thunderstorm this morning. Yum.

Planted thus far:

two grapevines
four anise hyssop
two patches of catnip (from seed)
some morning glories
four blue phlox
sweet basil
sixteen marigolds
two lemon balm
three stargazer lilies
three daylilies
four gladiolus bulbs

Yet to plant, on hand:

two more kinds of basil (from seed)
chamomile (from seed)
thirty-one gladiolus bulbs

Yet to do in general:

put together the raised bed boxes
move the pile of rocks into a proper cairn for the landwights
get the veggie garden in
find the sundial for the Ra garden
acquire or build trellising for the grapes

First of May, first of May, outdoor fucking starts today.

And it's planting time.

(Does anyone local want some gladiolus bulbs? :} )