We made it!

Congratulations, Northern Hemisphere! We made it through winter! It was a long, hard slog, but we did it.

We still have a stubborn snow pile that, while it shrinks daily, will probably be here for a couple more weeks. After the last of The Snows I bet Jesse that the plow pile would probably be there until May. It looks like I’m going to be proven correct, though I now wish we’d actually wagered something on the claim.

I’m busy getting ready for the next show: Punkcake is Springing Up Again! It’s in Worcester, MA on Saturday, April 25th. I hope you local folks can make it out, because it looks like it’s going to be a super fun day. There will be music and all sorts of vendors, and while it’s being held at a pub, it’s an all-ages affair. I am really looking forward to it!

In the meantime, here are some spring-time photos:

The first of the crocuses emerged on April 6th.

It was soon followed by several more of its friends. Here they are nine days later as my subjects while I play around with depth and focus on my new camera.

Our Hyacinth (said like Daisy and Rose from “Keeping up Appearances”) opened yesterday and the warm sun really brought out the fragrance.

I put out more of the garden ornaments. I try to not go too Pinterest-mad, but I had to hang out an old teapot. I’m not sure what to plant in it yet, but I’m sure it’ll be Pinterest-worthy.

I like gnomes. A lot. I’ll save you from a photographic tour of my gnome collection, but here’s one of my newer ones. My mother’s an enabler and she gave me a set of solar gnome lights last summer.

The veggie garden is coming together slowly. I planted a batch of seeds in these peat pods, but I left the heating pad plugged in on a sunny day and I cooked them. I started a new batch and am trying to not kill those. If all goes well, I’ll have two kinds of tomatoes, cucumber, melon, lettuce, and cabbage. The beets and carrots and herbs are all getting direct seeded outside, but probably not until late May.

I planted a few kinds of peas in the one raised bed I’ve cleaned up thus far (I added some not-quite-ripe compost, hence the egg shell fragments everywhere). We need to make a cover in case I started them too early, and we usually have potential for frost through mid-May. The cabbages and lettuce will be going in next as soon as they’re ready.

And because ending this with a picture of dirt is a little boring, here’s one of the faded, plastic whirlygigs stuck in the fence surrounding the veggie garden. Happy Spring, everybody!

Gnomes!

gnome and leaves

Right, so, continuing with my gnome fixation, here is one of the gnomes that will appear at the Spring Anew art show in Greenfield this Saturday, as part of my piece, “May Pole A-Go-Go!” Click through for more gnomie goodness, and to see the may pole as completed, and all the stages of its construction. I dropped it off at BlogSEA manor on Tuesday.

And, I have to admit, I was a little sad to leave it there. I’m not too good at making stuff, and then sending it out into the world. The may pole is coming back home with me, but the mushrooms and gnomes are for sale. I had to keep the first gnome back, though (the one with the yellow hat). I’m too attached to him. He’s in the show, but he’ll be coming back home when it’s over. Once you give them names, it’s over. Yellow-hat gnome is called “Wendell.”

None of the other gnomes were named, though. I learned my lesson. When the may pole comes back home, I’ll make more gnomes and mushrooms, and all will be well. I’m thinking of making a Yarn Harlot gnome to bring to the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee reading next Wednesday. Is that too dorky? Probably. I bet she gets all sorts of goofy stuff from fans.

Stuff ‘n’ nonsense

• While walking to school this morning, I took a slightly different route than usual. I went through the Wentworth campus, and came out near Mass Art. Anyway, in front of the Greek Orthodox church near Wentworth I saw the following spraypainted on the sidewalk: “white ppl -“. That’s it. So… white people, eh? Then as I walked further along, passing one of the Wentworth buildings, I see “white people = useless” on the sidewalk. Apparently, the person who spray painted the first had to cut his/her message short, or realized mid message that they were vandalizing the wrong sidewalk. Anyway, it made me chuckle to myself. After all, I was feeling particularly useful this morning. Take that, sidewalk message!
• Check this out: dirty car art (link from Kristen). If only I were that ambitious.
• On the subway on the way home, I saw a defaced advertisement. I can’t remember what it was for, but someone drew an eye patch on the woman in the picture, and gave her a talking bubble thing: “Arrgh! Shiver me timbers, shit bag!”
• Jesse and I bought a bunch of stuff from Laptop Lunches. We got some American-style bento boxes. Pretty neat. It’s going to seriously streamline the feed bag, that’s for sure. I’m considering making some rockin’ bento lunches (redundant?) as inspired by Cooking Cute… tempting, though I’m not sure I have that kind of time. But isn’t it inspiring? And cute?
• We’re also going to buy some seedlings from Seeds of Change. We bought some seeds from them in the past, but we weren’t very successful with our growing efforts from seed to transplant to harvest. We managed to not kill some tomatos one year, but that’s about it. This year, if we start from seedlings, we’ll have a sporting chance. We hope.
• Still planning on a fun audio project using my new gizmo, but nothing’s really come of it yet. We’ll see. It’s a fun idea, though.
• School’s going smoothly thus far. I’ve got a fun project in the works for my Oral History class, but I don’t want to divulge any details yet, since it’s not actually finalized. I have decided on a final paper topic for Preservation, though: Textiles and Realia in an archival setting. Interesting, no?
• I started making another hat to be deposited in the bag o’ hats that were supposed to be Christmas gifts this year. I’ll probably get around to giving them out this summer. Nothin’ says sunny days like a knitted hat, right?
• I’m feeling much better these last couple of weeks. I started taking a multi-vitamin regularly and that seems to be working. No more fatigue, not as much mid-day nausea, no dizziness… things are looking up.
• We watched V for Vendetta the other day. It was pretty good, I thought. I really enjoyed it. Though Natalie Portman’s accent was a bit irritating. Almost as bad as Drew Barrymore in Ever After, though not quite. I suppose if you’re cute you can get away with it. In other movie news, we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith last night. It was enjoyable. Of course, we were a wee bit intoxicated, so that probably helped. Drunk dialing friends in Western MA is fun, especially when they drunk dial you a couple of hours later.

a boiling pot and a garden

Not every day expresses itself like the previous post. Consider a boiling pot:

It’s bubbling like crazy, and even when it is off the heat, for a little while things bubble to the surface. Unexpected things. All is well, but some things must be expressed, even if they don’t make sense right away. I could edit the hell out of that post to better explain what I mean, but it would do no one any good.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the weather turned back into winter for a spell. I used my time wisely this weekend to prepare the garden. I raked the whole thing to clear out all the leaves and dead grass that had covered the ground. I even made a compost pile container out of some old pallets. I turned under the main garden bed, weeding as I went along. I went through the seed stash and picked out what is to be planted, and where. I still have a few beds to turn under, but I got enough done so that the rest of the work can be done in a few hours or less. Woo hoo!

It was so nice to get out there in the sun, with no jacket on. I even wore a short-sleeved shirt! Ah, spring!

And now, winter again. Ah, well. Knew it was coming. I heard we’re supposed to get snow again. Either today or tomorrow. That will be fun. I love snow, and even when I’m through with winter, I still love snow. I changed over most of my wardrobe because I knew I wouldn’t have a chance before it got warmer. I saved some winter things, of course, and will only put them away when I know it’s going to stay warm for the rest of the season.

The daffodils are quite cheery. We didn’t get that many this year, so I think this fall will be time to replant the bulbs. I just hope they aren’t too expensive, because I know a bunch of them will probably get eaten by the woodland creatures. Bah!

All of this productivity (the garden and clothing change-over) rather ate my time this weekend to write my paper. So, I’m up before dawn to write it, as it is due today. It is only a three page report, and I couldn’t have written it before last night anyway, because I needed some statistics from my internship. So there.