The Responsible One

I overly relate to the guy on stage right, watching to make sure some drunk doesn't give himself a concussion:

GobbleGobble - Lawn Knives from Ryan Green on Vimeo.

End of June

Update in the lab: a pretty gel I made, for a conference in August in Minneapolis:

Update at the farm: our newest little residents (two so far):

Update in the village: I've agreed to be head merch bitch for the local festival. Will get to see this guy live. Sigh.

billboard advertising

Found in the physics department, of all places.

How to assemble a hipster costume

I once joked to a coworker that I don't dress myself in the mornings so much as put on a costume: Rockabilly retro (rolled up skinny jean with peeptoe pumps and victory curls) or country girl (oversized dress shirt, denim skirt, worn leather cowboy boots), undergrad uniform (jeans, sneaks, hoodie), sexy librarian (blouse, high-waisted pencil skirt, bun), eccentric music lover (ripped band t-shirt, pigtails, purple pants, military boots), etc etc.

Clearly I love getting dressed in the mornings.

With my latest eyeglasses purchase:

combined with my favorite mode of transporation:

and my slightly rebellious hairstyle:

make me too trendy to bear, I can almost feel the eyerolls as I zoom by. Heehee.

funny email kickback

from my boss:

[Dr.Bossman] has gone away until about 3 July.

His email access will be intermittent.

For urgent laboratory issues, please contact [Natalie's email].

For urgent personal issues, you already know how to reach him.

If you are a burglar looking for empty houses, seek elsewhere, since 4 large dogs and two active young men will still be living at his house.

solstice

We celebrated the arrival of summer with a meal of fresh-caught fish (courtesy of hubby), some BBQ potatoes, healthy (and largely organic) salad and some blueberry pie made from the berries my mother picked for me last year. Save for the fish, the items were imported or stored things, since it's been too cold here for anything much to grow. Can you believe a frost warning for lower lying areas tonight?

My poor struggling lettuce:

Oh well, during the day I remember it's summer, and while the veggies are struggling the wild flowers are doing OK. I picked this bouquet out of items growing in our ditch (columbine, iris and unknown white flower):

This year, with the veggie patch under control, I've set my sights on planting berries and perennials that will continue to provide us with treats and pretty flowers for years to come. So far, 30 raspberry canes, 80+ strawberry plants and one lone blueberry have made their way to our patch of paradise.

These are the raspberries along the picket fence near the barn, and there may be more arriving soon:

Eighty tiny strawberry plants live here between the rows of sticks, surrounded by a net to keep the chickens out:

The fruit we plant this year will join the few things we managed to get into the ground last year. Of course the fruit trees in the orchard...there were a few close calls but I think all the trees made it this spring. A couple of grape plants growing along the fence among the unkempt grasses:

The garlic patch and chamomile plants:

The front porch perennial beds, which replaced a few very sad looking cedar bushes last summer:

Although I promised to do away with annuals entirely, I couldn't help buying a couple hanging baskets of deep purple petunias to hang on the lovely hooks my husband installed last year. They look great growing next to the pale purple lilac tree and make my entrance much more jubilant.

Announcements

I received the above image as part of the email listserv I belong to for a culture collection agency. It makes me so happy that I still work in a field where the above critter is discussed (as it was at last week's lab meeting) and where I still see images of the eukaryotic tree of life in all it's criss-crossed and befuddled glory.

ocean's edge

I live here, yes I do. I wish you did too.

Oh Gimme a Break

The Canucks were being kind of jerks, weren't they? And got only 8 goals the whole series? So save the whining/rioting and be classy for fuck's sake. Anyway, there are more East Coast Canadians on the Bruins team.



I visited Boston for the first time this spring. I rode on the transit and ate at an Irish Pub. Best crabcake of life, with a cold cider to wash it down with. (I just spent 30 minutes trying to track my route and find the pub but no luck. Second story, dark wood decor and somewhere near the financial district). So let's just be happy that our lives are lovely enough we don't have to riot about an economy in the total shitter and a goverment that can't decide what to do about it. Honestly.

Ready for Blue

Barbie Hair (TM) in preparation for another round of "honestly-aren't-you-too-old?" blue hair dye:



Time for a coconut oil/almond oil treatment after this :)

too fussy

In grade eleven my art teacher asked me if she could have a copy of this album after I played it in class one day. I made her a tape. Hipster sentence alert: I still know all the lyrics to all the songs off this album but I don't much like the newish stuff.

On the Menu

When harvest time arrives for my garden, and cucumbers are overflowing from my basket, and my mint is growing as a weed, THIS is what I'm going to do:

Catch-22

Goddamn Catch-22 is an awfully depressing movie. Watched it last night and even though I keep telling myself it is just a social commentary, it is still sticking with me.

Fotos o' the farm

Bald eagles live nearby, we see them swooping in pretty close to our bee field on a regular basis. Here is a picture of one at dusk (see that speck in the sky?)

And the orchard, also at dusk, home of the giant rhubarb plants:

In the front yard we have a new (last fall) magnolia tree and a black cherry tree (no picture):

The side yard, by my herb garden and garlic patch, is a newly tilled strawberry patch. Just behind the white fence is a newly dug drainage ditch, helping keep puddles at bay:

The dog looks over the three garden plots and the chicken coop. In them are tomatoes, peas, kale, golden beets, onions, lotsa green beans, lettuce, cucumbers, and squash:

Our stress-reliever/wood chopping block and the new compost bin I salvaged from someone's garbage pile (next to my jerusalem articokes...which haven't come up yet. I DO have a wretchedly brown thumb, but is it even possible to kill a vigorous edible weed??):

And the barn, which houses our new John Deere (haYUK) lawn tractor. That now brings us up to three vehicles (motorcycle, scooter and lawn tractor) that all cost more than the single car we drive every day. I guess we know where the priorities lie:

Speaking of priorities, what's this just around the barn corner?? Could that be an ideal 1/2 acre (with much room to expand) plot for growing HOPS? Yes, I think it might be. Needs to be tilled and some giant 16 foot posts need to be purchased (might go see a set sourced on kijiji this weekend), then we will really be on our way:

It is essential to find humour in everything

Boston Pizza restaurant chain changes the name of all 62 locations in BC during the hockey play-offs.

don't ask me I dunno either

Napster has a version of Nature Boy by Teri Thornton. The arrangement is all over the place, no pattern at all. It's beautiful.

Old house Things

We are getting quotes for moving our furnace and venting this week. In the process I was looking for antique grates to replace some of the broken or missing ones in our house and came across the ebay listing for this item from Wisconsin for $90:

We have at least two of these exact cast iron grates in our house, and they'll be unnecessary once we move our ducting.

My mom came down this weekend to help outside. I shovelled about 6 yards of pit run gravel around our driveway to shore up low spots in the ruts between the grass lane. It took about seven hours of physical work to get it all done (our driveway is probably ohhh....100+ metres long) and I was very sore the next day. I also seeded one of the two garden beds with zucchini, squash, green beans, lettuce/spring mix/cilantro and some golden beets. I received the tomato plants to finish out that bed from my father-in-law last night. The other bed I seeded with vetch/pea/clover mix (ie green manure) to increase nutrient soil of that fallow bed. Then third bed was too hard to manipulate still (tilled from sod only twice so far I believe), so I'll add some peat moss and till it once more before adding my kale and onions and potatoes. And cucumbers. Also "seeded" the beaver dam on the other side of our 135 acres with 100 tiny speckled trout. Hopefully they'll be big and tasty next year.

Since we left the back part of the house exposed with Typar house wrap and lattice over the winter, now is our opportunity to replace the exterior finish. There is some contention on this, as we try to balance ease of installation, cost of initial installation and maintenance over time. We live in a folk Victorian, so the most historical choices would be wooden horizontal plank or shingle. We could cheat and install either cement Hardie board instead of wooden plank, or vinyl siding meant to look like cedar shingles. Both would have much lower maintenance costs (in time and money) but ew, I hate vinyl. And I LOVE shingles. Love them soooo much. But how much? Like, hire-a-painter-every-few-years-to-refinish love? Scrap-shingles-in-the-heat love? Hmmm...I can say yes, but right now we are financially stable, child-free homeowners. In a few years those things might change. SO decisisons decisions.

New Pumps

Going with the theme, these peacock pumps are eye-catching.

Good days don't start with

1. remembering a sad, metaphorical dream in great detail.

2. cracking open an egg from the hen house and realizing that yes, indeed, the chickens we inherited last year definitely had at least one rooster among them.

3. hearing from the Biorad rep that the product supposedly shipped out on overnight delivery won't actually get here until next week.

Question:

Do I unknowingly choose the windiest days to wear full Aline skirts OR is it windy here everyday but I only notice it on days I wear full Aline skirts??