backlog: visiting family in Portland

My parents flew out at the beginning of Oliver's spring break, Saturday two weeks ago, and they drove up the coast highway. This entailed collecting many sea-worn pebbles, and innumerable grains of sand, and I need to borrow a vacuum cleaner. It can wait until after I finish getting dribs of potting soil on the carpet too. Anyway, they reached Josh and Brooke in Portland by the middle of the week, and I went down to visit for a night.

( plant books, new condo, charging rhinos, parking ticket )

backlog: family visits Seattle

Oliver flew back down that Sunday, but the rest of the crew came up to Seattle on Monday -- J and B just for the day. They stopped at IKEA, and then got lost trying to follow my directions to my place. (I did offer the can't-miss directions, where you get off 5 at 85th and then come forty blocks back....) We went to quiz night at the Irish Emigrant, along with the usuals, and had eleven people total, in two teams. House of Quack actually won the B division. Josh got to drive the borrowed Jeep home that night in the rain with a flat-packed wardrobe sticking out the back, but I gather they made it.

In the morning we walked down to Fremont for bagels. What used to be called Bagel Oasis turns out to be closed until May for some construction work. We got sandwiches at that place advertising wheat-free waffles near Kwanjai Thai, then sprouts at PCC for my demonstration of how to make pad thai for dinner, which they say will give them great pleasure and save them millions of dollars; went on down to the canal, saw the bridge draw up with excellent timing, came back. They liked the neighborhood, its hilliness and backwaters and what people have done in their yards. As we walked we remarked on remarkable rosemary shrubs and things in flower.

( outrigger plant shelves )

backlog: snails, toys, seeds, electric sheep, Evil, ginger and antimony

At night, snails promenade along the sill of my moss-and-parsley box. Some night or other I tried to take pictures by available light. I kept getting motion-blurred snails, if you can believe that.

( motion planning is hard, but I have a toy for my refrigerator )

( sowed ten-year-old seeds )

( synthesize beautiful video at home and earn $thousands a week! )

( interview with the vampire; honey bees )

( gingerbread, antimony, sick sick hamsters )

yesterday: intensive gardening on the balcony

Bought pots. The Indoor Sun doesn't stock rhizobial bacteria, so I hope my legumes get lucky without my help. (They do stock an endomycorrhizal inoculant, but although I don't know whether I should giggle dismissively at the "40 spores/cc" fine print, I do.)

Strung a web of saffron nylon twine between my railing and the balcony above.

Washed the glass of the sliding door. Twice. It's rather better than it was.

Sowed mustard greens, pole beans, snap peas, morning glories (two pots), and what Thompson and Morgan calls "asparagus pea" and Tetragonolobus purpureus, which I hope is synonymous with Psophocarpus tetragonolobus, the winged bean. The seed packet mug shot looked like winged bean. The Internet is murky, but signs point to yes.

If I were on a higher floor, I could see over the neighboring building to the Olympic mountains, but on this floor I have trees, a holly (I think) off the end of the balcony and some presumed Rosacea which would grow into the living room if I knocked out the windowpane. It's blooming madly, and my very happy fritillary too.

Maybe I need a gardening userpic.

today: Seward park, Lucknow sour lentils

I inveigled hattifattener and jinian to come try out Seward Park with me. We had a leisurely drive down Lake Washington Boulevard, which down there is thick with parks; we stopped for a bit at a beach with willows. Seward's shore path was pretty, but what fired me to visit it was Trees of Seattle remark that it had stands of sizeable trees, so we went into the interior too, and it was quite something for in the city. We saw a vale of skunk cabbages, a severed log with grody fungus, many trees clothed in ferns, a trillium.

We made an experimental dal for dinner, "Lucknow sour lentils", along with a known chickpea-vegetable stew. The lentils came out not much sour (more tamarind!), but a very tasty arrangement of flavors. To make again.

I need to find my lens-cleaning paper. But first I need to play with my refrigerator toy!