Growing your own food - Part 2

The Spring brings great ambition and promise to the would be vegetable gardener...I buy the plants, the seeds, the cages the compost...you name it...full force. I even had a plan. As with life, the plan does not always roll-out as planned. Most of my seeds - nothing came up..the odd carrot or beet - but really 2 weeks of HAtteras and the garden had been devoured by weeds. The tomato harvest was a bit of a bust. Last year I could hardly keep up..this year...I found myself int eh grocery aisle looking for tomatoes. Did anythign turn out? Sure - the summer squash were amazing, the zuchinni of course, the butternut and acorn squash came out great, and so did the herbs. But the peppers were a lost cause and so were the eggplants. Oh and the cucumbers never produced either???

Lessons learned:

* Weed, weed, weed and use straw on walking paths to keep the weeds down.
* No peppers - they suck to grow.
* Get a different plot - just off the road up fromt eh swampy areas.
* Don't plant tomatoes early...but buy them early.
* Squash and Zuchinnis are dependable.
* Tomaotes...use the tinfoil and paper bags in the early stages,,,then grow grow grow...trim trim.

So better luck next year.

Serendipity

It has been a pretty awesome day...the stars aligned and well - nothing major blew -up. I got a huge compliement on a challenging piece of work I truly enjoyed, got a job offer, lost my purse, had purse returned - made a friend Margie in the process! Had to get this down, so that when I have a no good really bad day...I can remember this one.

New My Space site

Created a space on Myspace. Couldn't think of what to call it...so you can fin me on my space at: www.myspace/BwhoUare

Death Cab 4 Cutie

Wen to see Death Cab last night at the Captial City Music Hall- it was an awesome show. Dreamlike music really. I can't put my finger on it- who do they remind me of??? It was an all ages show, so there were people there from like 13 to 40... it was really cool. I loved watching the young teens going crazy bursting with energy and enthusiasm that seems ot belong to them alone...and I longed for whatever could bring me back to that place for only a moment...to know myself at 15 or 16. I couldln't help but leave with the feeling tha tI needed to recover parts of myself that I had dropped along the way...wanting to set out and become something...follow my dreams...whatever they might be...I need to remember them.

Bought "plans" and a cool T-shirt.

The Sweedish Chef - Bork Bork!

You Are the Swedish Chef

"Bork! Bork! Bork!" Your happy and energetic - with borderline manic tendencies. No one really gets you. And frankly, you don't even get you. But, you sure can whip up a great chocolate mousse

The Muppet Personality Test

The Promise

Girl at the water evening,
originally uploaded by Viva.

"There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire." - Jules Renard

Polaroid Transfer - Me at the Vatican

While at the Vatican,
originally uploaded by Viva.

Here is a sample of the work I do - this is me in Italy..

The Art of Growing Your Own Food - Spring

The only constant in gardening is that no year is ever the same. Food growing can be finicky and it is not just he weather, but the wildlife you have to watch for.

This year while planting the garden there was so much I forgot, that's why this year I will record our activities.

April/May
April was mild and the heat was upon us quite early. There was a lot of rain so the soil was moist enough to give the plants a good start.

Tomatoes (Roma 38, beefsteak 20, 3 Sweet 100s)
We planted the tomatoes late in teh second week of April, though most wait til the end of April. Put a 2 inch collar of tin foil around the stem to fend off the pests and cover cages with clear plastic to protect from frost and keep warm. Pick anya nd all colorado potato beetles that may be present. Place marigolds around veggies to keep vermin away.

This year we planted (from seed):
Beets, carrots, spinach , swiss chard, leeks, spinach, lettuce (mesclun), Green beans, yellow beans, peas, butternut squah, acorn squash, and small yellow squash.

Eggplants (we got there from Ritchie cause rona sold out. We have 10 eggplants. 20 Peppers. While this year we did not cover hte peppers, many did well, should definaltey cover for next year if we put them in early.

DO not use fertilizers...they destroy the health organisms.

Their secrets and lives rolled into my bones
a persistent ache of unknown origin
a limp in this life before me

Their loneliness, their struggles
their hands not held and held too tightly
their loss and fear swelled in their bellies
bursting

Their searching extends through my fingers
and their wisdom lies deep in my gut
guiding me, shaping me and turning me
into the next layer of who we will become.

The Gift you can't Give

I have a wonderful friend. She can see all the most amazing things in everyone around her. She stands for things. She is smart, tall and funny. She is a great conversationalist. While self effacing, she still can't stop being the smartest and funniest girl in the room. She is beautiful and makes so much of her life count. She dips her fingers into the creative pursuits of others - she will say she is lazy and maybe a slob, but the truth is she has real priorityies - she would rather fill her life with the creative minds pursuits and hearts passions. I admire her so much - I so wish I could be more like her, but more than anything I wish I could give her the gift of seeing herself through my eyes.

Valerie

109_0988,
originally uploaded by Viva.

A beautiful night

It was as if the beauty outside begged me to notice it. My eyes were opened at the strangest hour. It must have been 4 am judging by the position of the bright moon. It lit up the white laundry swaying and rocking across the line, T-shirts, towels, dress shirts and undies all glowing in a cool moon blue against the lake. The water was still as if to be listening to a bump in the night. The trees stood prostrate sectioning my view through the window. It was a moment that wanted nothing more than to be taken - a moment where the world was standing still enough for you to notice yourself for the first time. My heart beating patiently in my chest, the heaviness of my flesh keeping me close to the ground and the swish of the blood moving behind my ears - all of this was extraordinary to me as it reminded me how warm being alive could be.

I am Flat

Sitting amoungst my friends the other night, I couldn't string together anything interesting to say. I have become completely BORING. I was boring myself with my useless chatter and wished somehow I would just go away. I don't get out enough. I walk out and look around me to be amazed at everything going on and then...I don't take it in.

I am currently supposed to be planning my garden and getting the house in order and well - taking care of Kaia is busy stuff. I am starting to feel the burden of this house, our possessions and it makes me feel cluttered and slow.

I am not someone that people would necessarily long to spend time with anymore. I am like furniture. While I can be kind - I feel I have become more 2 dimensional of late. I am not sure if it has happened recently or maybe with all the time I have alone - maybe I just noticed.

Fear Distraction

Distraction is ultimatley avoidance for me. Avoiding the fear buried in achieving something or finding out I am not capable of achieving what I dream. Pursuing the dream might mean to lose it or find out it is not there to be grabbed a hold of - that I might do it so very badly...so who cares if you do it badly...I guess I do...I always have. So I do nothing instead.

Humour is a way of being glib about fear. Where is the fear I am avoiding through distractions? Begin with the distraction: Creative distraction is maybe discovery and not fear at all..maybe yearning to create is to do somethign meaningful; to get to the meaning of things.

There is meaning in writing, picturing meaning and seeing meaning. I have not yet found that one thing brings meaning into my creative space. I find my photos and my writing a little cliche... afraid to cut to the surface. In fact writing about myelf is really not writing practice at all...but pure distraction from wiritng. I need to write with meaning. I need to picture that.

But this is a warm up. What is my artistic vision - one that will transcend written word, the photograph the medium? I think it will have something to do with fear or rather the lack of it. The quality of woman standing alone and strong in what she beleives. That is not me, it is what I hope for me to be. But when I see it in a statue, a photo, a poem or story - it draws me in.

I need to stop journalling and begin wrtiting and getting real about it. Getting into a real mode of writing and capturing that which is true to what I really want to express, not what I hope to distract myself with. Shame is at the heart of my fear. Put my hear to the ground and listen to the pulse of that for a moment. Fear and judgemnet cloud my head and writing. Quick to write off what doesn't make sense, I need to open my mind and heart to what is before me and listent to what is being said, not what I perceive to be before me. I need a new language of seeing and new what to filter the distraction and a new way to hear what is inside me. Why do I need to travel? Another distraction? Maybe, but it opens me up - wide open - especially where life is smaller that where we are now.

Shame

Maybe it is because there is a part of me that is still back there somewhere. The child that was embarrassed to have other people know that she lived in the projects on Martha Street. Thirty-six Martha st. I liked to think even then that I was better than what was around me, but the truth is - I was as poor as any of them and in many ways as unhappy. I could hear my friends being beaten by their parents for small things, yelled at on their front lawns, looked filthy and bedraggled on their way to school; children with mean dirty faces. They were worn down before they had a chance to do it to themselves. The sadness was there as a constant, but only lessened by bursts of playing a game of chase in and between the rows of houses into the evening. So when I see these young weathered faces, I feel helpless in the worst way. I want to whisper in their ear that they are good and smart and worthy of love. I want to tell them to hang in there…it will get better. To hold them tight. But, I know that for many they will only carry their shame and hurt into their lives, and some of the lucky ones, like me, will pretend that this never happened. Deny that it was ever part of you. Look forward and make the past disappear somewhere. Look the other way so it doesn’t hurt anymore.