The garden today

And we have foliage! So far I'm very happy with the garden, except that it ended up being too small.  The previous post showed where I planted everything, and it turned out that the nasturtium were not a trailing variety and I missed some thinning of the marigolds, so the carrots weren't getting any sun.  So I moved some of each today in hopes that the carrots will fare better.  We have blossoms on the tomatoes, and I've seen a bumblebee this year so hopefully they'll be fertilized. Last year we got blossoms and no tomatoes, so we'll see what happens.  I may end up having to go out there with a paintbrush, but I'm hoping not.

Our wonderful neighbor Maggie brought me cherry tomatoes, and I have six cherry trees that need to go in the ground around the back yard, but for the moment I moved the one that has the most cherries on it into the garden house so maybe we'll be able to eat them.  Kristianna and Charlie helped me taste test the first strawberries last week, so now I just have to fight the slugs.  Nasty critters.  So after adding the small 'matos and the raspberry (bottom left inside), the garden house is very full.  Some blueberries have dropped the flowers and started becoming berries, so that should be tasty soon!

The mint has totally taken off and filled the pot; I'm not a fan of mint tea, so I need to figure out what else I can do with it.  If only I had a lime tree, I'd be set for doctoring up my mojitos. The thyme and basil have started coming up but aren't tall enough yet to taste them. Soon, I hope. And the only other change to the drawing in the last post was that the corner edemame pot became miniature sunflowers instead, and they're coming up nicely. The edemame is also coming up well, though it's being eaten by a voracious insect of some kind.  I need to find my pepper spray.  The green bean and green onion seeds from last year appear to be completely dead, but at least I have onions from last year becoming enormous, and beans are cheap if I decide I need them.  I'm also contemplating a leaf or romaine lettuce, but I'll only plant that if I get my watering system working, since they need to be well watered. 

Last week I got the watering system all set up and got all the spray nozzles on the tubing at the right places, and then realized I forgot to flush the line.  Clogged line = clogged nozzles, and I only have exactly as many as I need, so I went back to pull them off again... and the warm rubber tubing had snuggled in nicely.  When it's not so wet out (we've had a lot of rain) I'll have to go back out with a pliers and get it all finished.

Well, I was going to leave you with two more pix, but Blogger's having a fit. I guess you'll have to wait!

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Dipping into the bucket list

I am so proud of my husband, who is steadily knocking things off his bucket list. Last week Triple Ace Games released the new game, Wonderland No More, for which my husband is a co-author.  I am so amazingly proud of him!  The game is a role playing game based on Alice in Wonderland, but set in the future after Alice has come and gone.  Thanks to Kevin and Jordan, the other co-authors, for including my dearest in this great creation.

Here he is at an impromptu book signing at Dragonsnack Games:

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Garden Extravaganza

One fabulous thing about living in the south is that we can start gardening so much earlier than everywhere else.  There's an online garden thing called ezgarden that had a free 15 days (after that we pay) but it looks interesting. You tell it your planting zone (I'm in 8A), what kind of plants you want and how many servings per week on it, do layout on your garden space, and then it calculates a schedule and tells you what to do when on a calendar.  For my needs, it had me starting seedlings the first week of January, so that tells you something.

Last year's (and years before that) problem was that we'd grow things and the local critters would gnaw on them before we got a chance to harvest. Last year we only got a total of three tomatoes that we could eat... and that was with three whole plants! So this year - faced with boredom, great weather, a pile of scrap lumber, and angst - I built a structure and covered it in bird netting to keep out the critters.  It is 4 feet deep by 7 1/2 feet wide by 4 feet tall, just great for me. I can reach the top, and Lanse can fit okay enough crouching to still be able to run out and grab something for me later on.  Today I put the final nail in the door, attached the hinges with my me-sized power screwdriver, and voila!  It is finished!

Here's a layout of what I've got in seedlings and somewhere in the mail. I need to make one more trip to the dirt store for some organic soil, and when that's in place I can finish setting up the watering system I bought last fall and never finished.  It's a vacation timer system, but I intend to use it when I'm home to help combat the extreme summer heat. As soon as the plumbing is set, I can get the seedlings in the ground, as most of them are about to outgrow their toilet paper tubes.

I'm so excited!  This year hopefully we'll get to eat a lot more of our own homegrown produce.*

* Yes, I realize that lilacs aren't food, but the fauna thinks it is because it's still small, so I'm keeping it in here as long as it'll fit.

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Science Fiction God

I'm pretty sure that I've written about this idea before, but it continues to amaze me how much fiction informs how we think about faith. Science fiction and fantasy are all about making things happen that couldn't possibly happen, making the impossible merely improbable, either by magic or the wonderous advances of humanity. It's all about defining or explaining miracles, more or less, putting words and shapes and pictures and stories to the thing. In many of Terry Pratchett's novels, the Story is alive; it can itself be the motivating force to actions, and characters can understand how to act and what (loosely) to expect if they can figure out which Story they're living in. The stories we read give us a framework for understanding, and a new set of language in which to try to comprehend the world.

We've been watching a lot of Doctor Who lately. While I can't remember the exact quote, I asked Lanse a question about the plot and he said something along the lines of, "It shouldn't be this hard to explain a temporal paradox before breakfast." That's when it hit me. In this series, we see exactly how a person can be in two places at once. We see how time can be rewritten, given the ability to move back and forth in it, and the devastation that can occur when it's done badly. We can watch and try to comprehend the idea of things happening that absolutely can not happen, or two opposite things happening simultaneously because time is being rewired somehow. We are given the chance to understand, to wrap our brain around words like "temporal paradox" and start to believe them.

We're given the ability to start to understand how God can be in heaven, while watching his Son come into the world, and sending His Spirit to scholars in the East, while still being the same single being at the same moment. We can begin to comprehend being everywhere at once, when time doesn't hold you, and how sometimes the bad things happen to us because there's no other way to get through to us. Perhaps we can start to really look and listen to the little voice He gives us that tells us to remember what He said, because remembering is the important part that will bring hope and peace to the world. And we can see how a being with all this power, who has gone through excruciating love and pain and loss, losing - by choice - the people he loved the most, can still come back time and again to the broken people on Earth, because of who we are and who we can be.

I don't really watch much science fiction now beyond Doctor Who, so I can't speak on the whole genre. But I'm grateful for the opportunity to have this new language and these stories to help me better grasp a small fraction of what my God has done for me. I wonder what I'll learn this coming season.

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