The exercise:
Write about: the sailor.
Seeded some beets and carrots in the garden this morning before marking out the rows where our leeks, onions, and shallots will be transplanted. Kat and I are planning on working on that tomorrow morning while Max hangs out with his grandma.
After we woke up from our afternoon nap I took Max into town to deposit a couple of box program payments (hurray for offering an early bird discount in order to get money sooner) and to check out the park. It was incredibly busy there, as there was a family reunion/get together of some sorts going on. Balls, babies, puppies... Max was pretty much in heaven.
Weather-wise, it felt like an early summer day. So nice.
Mine:
The constant creak of timber won't let me forget where I sleep. This rocking, swaying, lurching deck will always remind me where I stand. Salted air, fish-filled meals, sweat and alcohol; my nostrils need no further evidence of this place I call home.
Captain says we should see land any day now. So my eyes search the horizon at every opportunity, as though they would spot a tree before the man in the crow's nest could. Old Lucky's eye isn't that poor. But I look anyway. I can't help it.
It's been too many days of nothing but waves and sky out there. I need to see something different. Need to know that solid ground still exists. I want to believe that women still survive, still wear exotic perfumes and pretty dresses. My tongue aches for fresh food.
I need off this blasted ship.
Tuesday April 29th, 2014
The exercise:
Write two haiku about: laughter.
Spent most of the morning raking out areas in the garden for our carrots and beets to be seeded, as well as for our onions, leeks, and shallots to be transplanted. Should get going with one or both of those tomorrow.
Kat and I also took turns potting up our tomato seedlings. It's so nice to be only doing enough for ourselves this year, instead of the insane number we have been doing in order to sell some at the market in previous seasons.
Mine:
He wanders these halls,
laughter nipping at his heels;
should have worn his pants
* * *
In the silence he
thinks desperately, searching for
the key to her laugh
Write two haiku about: laughter.
Spent most of the morning raking out areas in the garden for our carrots and beets to be seeded, as well as for our onions, leeks, and shallots to be transplanted. Should get going with one or both of those tomorrow.
Kat and I also took turns potting up our tomato seedlings. It's so nice to be only doing enough for ourselves this year, instead of the insane number we have been doing in order to sell some at the market in previous seasons.
Mine:
He wanders these halls,
laughter nipping at his heels;
should have worn his pants
* * *
In the silence he
thinks desperately, searching for
the key to her laugh
Monday April 28th, 2014
The exercise:
Write about: the infestation.
I tried to get some work done in the garden with Max this morning but he was having none of it. Instead he was interested in wandering off in search of Kat, his grandma, the tractor... pretty much anything and everything.
So in the end I gave up and took him into town to do some grocery shopping. This guy has friends all over town now.
Mine:
We seem to have an infestation of some sort in the greenhouse. The most likely culprit is cutworms, since the damage matches up with the descriptions I've read. Although at this point I can't read anything about them without getting incredibly frustrated.
They started with a tray of salad greens I'd seeded a while back, though it was hard to tell at first. Initially I just thought the germination was poor, or being slow, or something. Then I realized that there were actually tiny stems poking out of the ground... and that the growth was ending there, because their tops had been eaten.
Now, I'll be honest here: we really should have done something about them then and there. But we've never had a problem like this in the greenhouse before and we were slow to act. Plus we had lots of salad greens, so the loss of one tray, while annoying, wasn't overly problematic.
Then they discovered our pepper trays. Before I realized anything was wrong (again: poor or slow germination came oh so readily to mind) they managed to wipe out all of our pepper seedlings. All of them. Every last one.
I am having difficulty avoiding swearing right now.
So. No pepper plants in the greenhouse. Option one is to talk with our farming friends to see if anyone has any extras we can inherit. Option two is buying seedlings at the farmers market in Penticton. This is considerably less appealing, since we don't make much money off our peppers - they're mostly used in our boxes and we don't sell much otherwise.
This was really not the start to the season we were hoping for, but we should still be able to recover from it. I just wish we didn't have to, as there's more than enough other things to worry about already.
Write about: the infestation.
I tried to get some work done in the garden with Max this morning but he was having none of it. Instead he was interested in wandering off in search of Kat, his grandma, the tractor... pretty much anything and everything.
So in the end I gave up and took him into town to do some grocery shopping. This guy has friends all over town now.
Mine:
We seem to have an infestation of some sort in the greenhouse. The most likely culprit is cutworms, since the damage matches up with the descriptions I've read. Although at this point I can't read anything about them without getting incredibly frustrated.
They started with a tray of salad greens I'd seeded a while back, though it was hard to tell at first. Initially I just thought the germination was poor, or being slow, or something. Then I realized that there were actually tiny stems poking out of the ground... and that the growth was ending there, because their tops had been eaten.
Now, I'll be honest here: we really should have done something about them then and there. But we've never had a problem like this in the greenhouse before and we were slow to act. Plus we had lots of salad greens, so the loss of one tray, while annoying, wasn't overly problematic.
Then they discovered our pepper trays. Before I realized anything was wrong (again: poor or slow germination came oh so readily to mind) they managed to wipe out all of our pepper seedlings. All of them. Every last one.
I am having difficulty avoiding swearing right now.
So. No pepper plants in the greenhouse. Option one is to talk with our farming friends to see if anyone has any extras we can inherit. Option two is buying seedlings at the farmers market in Penticton. This is considerably less appealing, since we don't make much money off our peppers - they're mostly used in our boxes and we don't sell much otherwise.
This was really not the start to the season we were hoping for, but we should still be able to recover from it. I just wish we didn't have to, as there's more than enough other things to worry about already.
Sunday April 27th, 2014
The exercise:
Brought to you by my recent rediscovery of this album, pick a song title from Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance and use it as the inspiration for your writing today. I ended up choosing one of the covers they did, mostly because I found those the most appealing, so don't feel obligated to pick one of their original songs.
Kat and I slipped a bit of farm time into our day off, as we wanted to get the cabbage plants out in the garden. We did the savoy and purple, but didn't get to the regular green variety. It was tempting to keep going until we finished, but we managed to resist spending too much of the day working.
Mine:
The Man Who Sold The World
You wouldn't have suspected a thing if you'd seen him walking down the street before it all went down. Not that you'd have been likely to see him there in the first place - he spent the vast majority of his time in his mother's basement, fixated on that fancy computer of his.
I guess that investment really paid off for him in the end, huh? I mean, that's why he was the first one to decode the messages. That's why he was the first one to figure out how to speak the language, send a reply back.
If it wasn't for that single minded determination of his, they never would have trusted him like they did. Otherwise, the offer might have been sent to someone else. Someone holed up in some secret government laboratory, I bet.
I wonder if his or her answer would have been any different?
Probably not. Perhaps the final number would have been slightly different, maybe a few billion dollars in either direction.
Heck, I know I would have sold the world for that kind of money. Though I'd like to think that I would have insisted on a few more people being spared when they arrived to take the reins...
Brought to you by my recent rediscovery of this album, pick a song title from Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance and use it as the inspiration for your writing today. I ended up choosing one of the covers they did, mostly because I found those the most appealing, so don't feel obligated to pick one of their original songs.
Kat and I slipped a bit of farm time into our day off, as we wanted to get the cabbage plants out in the garden. We did the savoy and purple, but didn't get to the regular green variety. It was tempting to keep going until we finished, but we managed to resist spending too much of the day working.
Mine:
The Man Who Sold The World
You wouldn't have suspected a thing if you'd seen him walking down the street before it all went down. Not that you'd have been likely to see him there in the first place - he spent the vast majority of his time in his mother's basement, fixated on that fancy computer of his.
I guess that investment really paid off for him in the end, huh? I mean, that's why he was the first one to decode the messages. That's why he was the first one to figure out how to speak the language, send a reply back.
If it wasn't for that single minded determination of his, they never would have trusted him like they did. Otherwise, the offer might have been sent to someone else. Someone holed up in some secret government laboratory, I bet.
I wonder if his or her answer would have been any different?
Probably not. Perhaps the final number would have been slightly different, maybe a few billion dollars in either direction.
Heck, I know I would have sold the world for that kind of money. Though I'd like to think that I would have insisted on a few more people being spared when they arrived to take the reins...
Saturday April 26th, 2014
The exercise:
Write a four line poem that has something to do with: smothering.
Kat and I brought Max into town this morning for another attempt at getting a haircut. We took him to a different hairstylist this time and she was really great with him. It also probably helped that we were both there with him.
And the end result was an actual, honest to goodness, complete haircut. He hasn't had one of those in far too long, and it's so nice to see him with a tidy do once more. And with very minimal fussing to boot.
Mine:
She stood accused of murder,
Her method: smothering.
Proclaiming her innocence,
She called it mothering.
Write a four line poem that has something to do with: smothering.
Kat and I brought Max into town this morning for another attempt at getting a haircut. We took him to a different hairstylist this time and she was really great with him. It also probably helped that we were both there with him.
And the end result was an actual, honest to goodness, complete haircut. He hasn't had one of those in far too long, and it's so nice to see him with a tidy do once more. And with very minimal fussing to boot.
Mine:
She stood accused of murder,
Her method: smothering.
Proclaiming her innocence,
She called it mothering.
Friday April 25th, 2014
The exercise:
Write four lines of prose about: the hybrid.
Kat and I spent a good chunk of the morning transplanting our broccoli plants into the garden. We were hoping to get to the cabbages as well, but they'll have to wait for another day.
I am very tired and very ready for this weekend.
Mine:
"Professor, I've been going over your notes for the upcoming experiments and -"
"Flawless, aren't they?"
"Well, actually, I had some questions about how you were planning on achieving some of the hybrid animals you outlined in pages fifty through ninety-one, especially some of the more... uh, unusual pairings."
"Then I am happy to assure you that the answer is the same for all of them: candles and some soft music to set the mood."
Write four lines of prose about: the hybrid.
Kat and I spent a good chunk of the morning transplanting our broccoli plants into the garden. We were hoping to get to the cabbages as well, but they'll have to wait for another day.
I am very tired and very ready for this weekend.
Mine:
"Professor, I've been going over your notes for the upcoming experiments and -"
"Flawless, aren't they?"
"Well, actually, I had some questions about how you were planning on achieving some of the hybrid animals you outlined in pages fifty through ninety-one, especially some of the more... uh, unusual pairings."
"Then I am happy to assure you that the answer is the same for all of them: candles and some soft music to set the mood."
Thursday April 24th, 2014
The exercise:
Write about: the final shift.
Because hurray, no more nights at the gym!
As a final parting gift, members were kind enough to clear out of the gym by 8:45 tonight. Normally people are working out until I shut off the music a couple minutes before 9, so it was nice to actually get out of there at a reasonable time for once.
Mine:
Earth is always moving. It constantly rotates on its axis while revolving around the sun, pirouetting silently through space. The waters filling its oceans are never still. Tectonic plates are colliding, brushing against each other, ever shuffling and shifting.
So far these shifts have been, relatively speaking, quite minor. Certainly many lives have been lost, massive cities have been decimated, but the scale has remained small. This cannot continue forever, we know this.
There will come a time for the great, final shift. A deafening thunder will rush across the planet's surface, the ground beneath our feet will convulse violently. Great fissures will open their jaws, swallowing us whole even as the demons of Hell slip from their dark cages and cavort in the streets of our crumbling cities.
Thick, black, choking smoke will block out the sun. Our cool, watery rivers will be replaced by rushing flows of searing magma. Life, as we know it today, will be no more.
But that day, that horrendous final shift is still far away. There is no need to panic; we have time.
At least, we think we do...
Write about: the final shift.
Because hurray, no more nights at the gym!
As a final parting gift, members were kind enough to clear out of the gym by 8:45 tonight. Normally people are working out until I shut off the music a couple minutes before 9, so it was nice to actually get out of there at a reasonable time for once.
Mine:
Earth is always moving. It constantly rotates on its axis while revolving around the sun, pirouetting silently through space. The waters filling its oceans are never still. Tectonic plates are colliding, brushing against each other, ever shuffling and shifting.
So far these shifts have been, relatively speaking, quite minor. Certainly many lives have been lost, massive cities have been decimated, but the scale has remained small. This cannot continue forever, we know this.
There will come a time for the great, final shift. A deafening thunder will rush across the planet's surface, the ground beneath our feet will convulse violently. Great fissures will open their jaws, swallowing us whole even as the demons of Hell slip from their dark cages and cavort in the streets of our crumbling cities.
Thick, black, choking smoke will block out the sun. Our cool, watery rivers will be replaced by rushing flows of searing magma. Life, as we know it today, will be no more.
But that day, that horrendous final shift is still far away. There is no need to panic; we have time.
At least, we think we do...
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