Garden Update

Here's another garden update!
I've been meaning to do this for a while; I guess it's been around three weeks since my last update. I have lots of lettuce sprouts! You can see the rose has put out some new branches, and the Early Girl is getting tall!

No Kids?

Today is "Bring Your Child To Work Day" at my workplace.

This morning when I walked in, both of the guards (the one in the parking lot, and the one at the building), both asked, "No kids?"

Geez, I didn't think I looked *that* old. When I said that I was single and had no kids, both guards seemed embarrassed. I kind of thought it was funny.

Maybe I gotta start wearing my hair down at work or something!

Garden Update

Am I way in over my head?
I am running out of room for containers!
I cut off the Peace rose buds when I saw them infested with aphids one afternoon. Not a ladybug in sight. The rose hasn't been putting out new leaves or anything like that, so I decided to help it focus on growing roots. I didn't really want to see what an aphid-infested bloom looked like, anyway.

I finally caged my tomatoes! The Early Girl is growing like a weed; as tall as the rose is. The Better Boys have finally figured out how to grow up and have started to put out leaves almost as prolifically as the Early Girl.
I added a jalapeno pepper and a patio tomato today. The Patio is supposed to be a cherry tomato. So we'll see. I also added a white carnation today too; it was horribly root-bound and I thought I could try dividing the plant. I was horrified to discover it was one plant! So I hope it survives. I wanted to use the pot that came with the miniature rose my parents gave me for my birthday, but when I tried to pour out some rainwater it slipped out of my hand and broke. Thankfully it was in clean pieces, so I'm going to try to epoxy the thing back together this weekend. Then it can serve as a water catcher for one of the carnations (if either of them make it)

My herbs are doing well; you can see I gave the chives a haircut (for the mashed taters I made earlier this week). I think the bottom herbs are getting a bit waterlogged though; the Thai Basil is still unhappy and you can see that some of the chives are yellowing. So I'm going to cut back and just water once a week and see how they do.
I started some mesclun seeds today; that's what the plastic is covering over the one pot. After they've sprouted I'll pull the plastic off. The Lobelia seeds haven't sprouted yet so I'm not sure what went wrong there. I've kind of given up on that idea though.

What else? The strawberries are really taking off too; the flowers that were there a couple weeks ago are now baby strawberries, and there are lots of other blooms and baby strawberries on their way as well.

More Gardening Links

UC Davis has this great list of gardening articles. I've noted my favorites.

Expert Urban Gardener - 218 pages (I haven't read the whole thing yet) of gardening info. Lots of scientific stuff in this one.

Grow Vegetables in Containers - Basic gardening info, but has a container depth guide.

Trace Elements and Urban Elements - Information on Urban Gardening. Good points on growing in containers to avoid stuff like lead and cadmium that is in the soil.

What to Grow in Containers - Nice graph on what to grow, in what size container, and how much sun said plants need.

Delicious, Delicious Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes is one of my favorite comfort foods. Okay, anything with potatoes, because when you combine them with fat (in the form of real butter), you get the perfect triage of starch, salt, and fat that makes for supreme bad-for-you deliciousness.

Francis Lam (who is fast becoming my favorite food author) just wrote an article on Salon covering the mashed potato, and his technique of preparing them.

I like to make mine by hand with a masher, and I leave the skins on. I use real butter (but some of the comments suggest olive oil, which I will definitely try) and milk. I usually cook a clove of garlic with the potatoes, and now that I have fresh chives from my garden I can add those in too.

Some of the other comments suggest a dash of nutmeg, which sounds interesting and I'd like to try that too, but I'm not so sure how well that will go with garlic.

Garden Update

I transplanted the Peace rose today, as well as a pepper plant from Home Depot and a rose my parents sent me for my birthday. I also fertilized all the plants that I didn't transplant today, using Miracle Gro's Shake 'n' Feed plant food. It comes in a smaller shaker jar than the one in the link. I just read the FAQ on the product and it says not to use it for container plants. Oops. If anyone has any helpful gardening feedback they can give to me, I'd sure appreciate it!

On the left is the rose; I planted Lobelia seeds around the edge of the container. On the top right is the Early Girl and on the bottom right are Better Boys I planted from seed. I need to get tomato cages for these soon. These are all 7 gallon containers. You can get them at Home Depot for around $10.

The Early Girl tomato and the California Pepper I bought from Home Depot both have flowers on them. The strawberries have lots of flowers on them and I'm hoping I'll get to eat some fresh strawberries in May!

Movie Review - Clash of the Titans (2010)

This update of the 1981 cult classic isn't bad when taken at face value. I'm honestly not sure exactly what all the critic hate is about. The original isn't exactly a gem, and already runs fast-and-loose with Greek myth.

I did take the critics' warning and shyed away from the 3-D theaters, since that seems where the bulk of the hate is centered. The film was intended as a 2-D picture, and the rushed up-conversion probably won't be worth your extra $5.

In all, I really enjoyed Clash of the Titans, which goes into the same campy/cheesy guilty pleasure bucket that films such as 300 belong to. Outside of the Kraken, I really liked all of the CGI character designs, my favorites being the Pegasus and Medusa. They really made horses fly, and it's absolutely fantastic. (I want one! My birthday is next week - can I have one for my birthday please?) The animators and character designers for Medusa really took the essence of her myth and brought it to the screen. She is both beautiful and hideous.

The throne room at Olympus is updated in several ways; the Greek stage human clay figurines "play" on has been converted into a satellite's view of the ground in the middle of the throne room, complete with cloud cover and water features. The clay figurines remain, but I didn't feel it was as hokey in this incarnation.

As much as people like to give Sam Worthington a hard time, I like his Perseus better. He's not nearly as silly Harry Hamlin's insipid version. I am both intrigued and annoyed with Gemma Arterton's Io. She's beautiful, we get that already. Using her as an expositionary device just makes her acting grating to watch (I can't imagine she'll be any better in Prince of Persia, where she plays a similar role). She does have the cheesiest line in the film, for whatever that's worth.

For fans of the original, Bebo is in the new film.

If you want to go see something fun and a bit mindless, I'd say this is a good film for that. It's definitely enjoyable if you don't expect it to be the next best thing to come out of Hollywood. Remember it's a remake of a cheesy flick, and it runs fast and loose with Greek myth. But then again, myths have changed to suit the teller's needs (one of the reasons so many versions of the "canon" myths exist). Buy popcorn and watch this from the back of the theater. And go see it in 2-D.

Container Garden

I've decided to start a container garden this year, as my patio gets just enough light to get "stuff" to grow. I had started some stuff from seed, but only the tomatoes and peppers made it.

I planted a strawberry pot with lots of herbs, and another strawberry pot with strawberries. I have an Early Girl tomato that I bought from Home Depot, as I don't have faith in my tomatoes that I planted. I also bought another pepper plant, so I think I'll be making a lot of fajitas, chili, sloppy joes, and stuffed peppers with all the peppers I'll be harvesting.

My favorite roses are the Peace rose, and I bought one to plant. My track record with miniature roses is an across-the-board failure though, so we'll see what happens. I also bought a packet of Crystal Palace Lobelia to plant under the rose; I think it will make it look really nice.

I hope this experiment turns out well. If the strawberries don't last through the year I'll probably try alpine strawberries next year in the strawberry pot. I tried some years ago when I was in Amsterdam and thought they were delightful.

Here are some container garden resources:

Container Vegetable Gardening - from Ohio State University
Vegetable Gardening in Containers - from Texas A&M (pdf)

Texting While Socializing

I saw this article on Slate and thought it would be interesting for discussion. (Is it just me, or are Slate and Salon hit-or-miss these days? Then again, I feel my blog is sometimes hit-or-miss, so I guess I shouldn't complain)

I was on a 2nd date once in an outdoor concert. My date seemed like a nice guy but I was bored to tears by him. I had a comrade text me several times about the date, and when I mentioned how awful it was turning out my comrade offered to call me with an "emergency" so I could leave. I didn't want to do that so I grit my teeth and waited the date out.

If I was genuinely interested in the guy I wouldn't have been texting my buddy. Then again, someone told me afterwards that if I was bored to tears then the guy deserved to have the girl be distracted/pulled away by other things. I'm not so sure I agree with that.

When I'm casually with someone I will answer phone calls and texts unless we are actively in the middle of a conversation. But if I'm just getting to know someone I like to give them my full attention.

It's Not Supposed to Be a Race. . . . .

This whole Life thing isn't supposed to be a race, right? We're supposed to muddle through this whole thing and hopefully we come out at the end with whatever we put into our lives.

Yet I feel simultaneously ahead and behind. More behind than ahead.

The person I think of as my ex from college is getting married in May. The relationship didn't work out for a lot of reasons; mainly I think we were just young and ultimately had incompatible world views. We both did a lot of ugly stuff to each other. So it goes.

He bought a house and has a dog. He's getting married already. I didn't "lose" because he wasn't right for me but I feel like he's "winning".

It's easy to focus on all the stuff that I don't have. I don't have a house of my own. I don't have a dog. I don't have enough time to do all of the things I want to get done in the day.

I try to tell myself that it's better that things worked out the way they did. I'm too young to get married anyway; I'm working on a higher degree and don't have the time to put into a live-in relationship. I try to tell myself that I think I'm prettier than the other girl, although in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter. At. All. I try to tell myself that neither of them has completed a marathon and neither of them works for The Man I work for. (Even if The Man gets me down some days, I think the deal I have with The Man is pretty good.) I'm fairly certain that I make more money than he does, or that I at least started out making more money than he does. I try to tell myself that it's hard to make it in L.A. and that if I was living in Sacramento making the money I do here I could easily afford to buy a house of my own.

Yet all of that feels hollow. It feels the weight of what I've gained since we parted is less than the weight of what he's gained. I feel like it should be even. It should be fair.

I try to tell myself that most married people are miserable, that many first marriages end in divorce. On the other hand I tell myself it's a good thing he found someone who is compatible with him. Someone who is a little older and has the compatible brokenness to deal with his mother issues I could never handle. It's a good thing they look happy together.

He told me once that he thought I'd never marry. He blamed our relationship's failure on me.

This whole mess was so long ago and yet I still feel "stuff" about it. I don't want to be the woman marrying him but I wish there was someone out there who wanted to marry me.

It's not supposed to be a race but I still feel like he won. Shit. I hopefully have at least 3/4 of my life to live and already feel like he won.

It's not supposed to be a race. Why do I feel like I lost?