Ang's Journal

The last few days have been a bizarre mixture of good & bad.

Good:

• A surprise visit from M*! They had a stressful week at work & decided to come decompress in the mountains for a couple of days. They arrived late Friday night & left Monday morning. We did a little bit of hiking & took the dogs down to the San Miguel River for some splash time.
  
• We also made an awesome peach cobbler on Saturday night, using Palisade peaches Annie bought at the Ridgway farmer's market.
  
• After church on Sunday, we went to an art festival in town, which was surprisingly large, varied, & GOOD! I bought a sweater made from alpaca wool that I suspect will be my new favorite thing this winter & we both bought some spice mixes.
  
• Sunday night, we sat out on the deck with Alan & Annie to watch the Perseid meteor shower. There were a couple of show-stoppers - extra-bright shooting stars with long tails. We also saw Starlink, which actually freaked M* out a little bit.

Bad:

• Poor Shadeaux had truly hellish diarrhea starting Thursday afternoon & continuing through Monday morning. She was doing very poorly on Saturday until she finally ate some chicken, rice, & psyllium husk mixed with diluted bone broth. This morning, she ate a bowl of regular dog chow with some rice & chicken & she seems to be feeling nearly normal. I'm giving her a probiotic & keeping my fingers crossed.
  
• On Monday morning, the basement toilet backed up (unrelated). I am sure I don't need to belabor the details on why that sucked.
  
• Also on Monday morning, Alan & I learned that two of our good friends in town (C* & J*) are getting divorced. They are the couple that owns the Beaumont Hotel (where we held our wedding reception). They just sold the hotel, & I guess they're calling it quits on everything. It's really sad - we love hanging out with them & we had no idea things were going badly between them. They're both planning to move out of state.

I've been reading & listening to a lot of audiobooks lately (thank you, Libby). My recommendations:

• The Divine Cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett. A post-apocalyptic world with a murder-mystery feel. What happens when your society has direct connection to the power of the gods - & then those gods are murdered?
  
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver takes the story of David Copperfield & sets it in Appalachia at the outbreak of the OxyContin crisis. Reading this novel while my mom (who lives on the edge of Appalachia) is dealing with pain management issues following her latest back surgery was chilling, to say the least.
  
• Project Hail Mary written by Andy Weir & narrated by Ray Porter. This audiobook won the 2022 Audie Award for the Audiobook of the Year. Reminiscent of The Martian, it's another great hard-science action adventure with the survival of humanity being only part of the stakes! Ray Porter brings the nerdy main character to life & the choice to incorporate minimal sound effects was a good one.

In other news, after many years of dilettante gardening, I have made a startling discovery: using fertilizer increases plant health & produce yields!!! Wait until I tell the farmers.

music link

"Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most afflicts the gardener." — Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

Having spent $186.27* on raised bed soil, seeds, & plants for my two raised beds this year, I am unlikely to even earn my money back in produce from my garden. But I have gotten my money's worth & then some in pride & enjoyment from cultivating these plants.


Tomatoes! Green onions! Kale! Chard! Peppers! Strawberries!


Herb fountain. ::: Slow berry production. ::: Future pasta sauce.


* This is a pretty good estimate; however, I don't remember exactly how much I spent on one packet of marigold seeds. I estimated $4. They never sprouted.

I haven't had much luck gardening in Colorado. I've managed to grow a little bit of chard, a few tomatoes, a bare handful of strawberries. Gardening on the Front Range is tricky. Spring can bring heavy, late snows all the way through May. Hailstorms can strike any time between April & July. There is the usual muster of pests: everything from beetles to mold to marauding squirrels & birds. Another pest is Shadeaux, who in particular has a taste for strawberries, fresh off the plant. Hobbes is more ecumenical in his destruction, reveling in digging in the soft soil of the raised beds.

Last week Earlier this week (what even is Time?), I partially filled the beds with soil & purchased some plants. I didn't want to put them in the ground (see above re: snow). But the extended forecast looks pretty good, with a few scattered thunderstorms predicted in the next 10 days, but no frost or snow. So yesterday, I went back to Home Depot & bought the rest of the soil I needed to top up the beds, as well as the rest of the herbs, vegetables, & strawberries to fill them up. And then I planted everything.






I'm watering my garden with a one-gallon watering can for now. The freshly-placed soil is very dry, & soaks up a seemingly unlimited amount of irrigation. My shelter-in-place exercise now partially consists of carrying gallons of water up out of my basement apartment to the backyard several times a day. Before too much longer, I assume the landlords will turn on the outside spigot. But not yet, because -- see above re: snow/frost.

Likely future purchases: one lettuce plant, some tomato cages, & something something protection from squirrels/birds/hail/Shadeaux.

Yesterday hotpantsgalore & I planted. Buying the veggie seedlings early & putting them in the grow tent was not a successful strategy - over half of them (both carrots, the cauliflower, one of the broccoli, cauliflower, pak choi, & spinach) died. We planted the two tomatoes, the two peppers, & the surviving broccoli in our raised bed. HPG bought a watermelon seedling & four strawberry seedlings, which also went in the box. HPG also bought a third tomato - a big Beefsteak. We planted it in a five-gallon container. I bought a "Pink Icing" blueberry bush, which also got planted in a container.

Last weekend (May 7th), HPG picked up the native plants I had pre-ordered from the Colorado Native Plant Society. She put them in the grow tent & they did great. We put them in the ground yesterday, in the planter box built along the western side of the house. Going left to right, I planted: Rocky Mountain Columbine, Small Erigeron, Monarda, Pearly Pussytoes, [some volunteer thingie with serrated dark green leaves], Golden Aster, [another volunteer, same as previous], Swampy Milkweed, [volunteer decorative grass], Desert 4 O'clock, & Western Yarrow.



Hopefully, the native plants won't require a lot of care or water. The western end of the house is only barely in range of the hose. Also, I think the plants I bought are a bunch of butterfly supporters.

Lawn notes: I hired a service to mow the lawn once a week. I think I'm paying $23/week, which totally seems worth it to me. Shadeaux has already learned to cower indoors on Wednesdays when the nasty loud machine comes around. The guy rakes all the clippings & puts them in my two compost bins. I have pretty much lost the war against the weeds in the lawn, so HPG bought some Roundup & did a bunch of "targeted strikes" on the dandelions & mallows. Shadeaux's dog door is locked closed & will be for at least 24 hours so she won't get another chance at being poisoned. Our dog walker will come get her for a couple of walks tomorrow during the work day.

Pond notes: I have now put 18 trapdoor snails in the pond for algae control. 12 of them only arrived yesterday, but so far they haven't made a dent in the underwater tropical jungle. Yesterday I also bought 4 tilapia fry - they are supposed to eat both algae & koi fry. One of them was instantly sucked into the pond's submersible pump & churned into chum, so that was money poorly spent. I can't see the other ones in the pond. Hopefully they haven't been chummed too.