I forgot an important "B" the other day -- broccoli!!!! (What was I thinking?!)
And look how well it's doing. (So far. We must not take these things for granted. Last year they all died a horrible fungal death after giving up their initial head of broccoli -- at least I got something out of them, but I was very disappointed. This year it's a different variety -- 'PacMan' -- so I hope they'll do better.)
And we've got some good C's coming up, as well:
Love the lacy look of the outer leaves. Actually, I don't love it at all, but as long as the slugs (or whatever it is that is wreaking this havoc) stay on the outer leaves and leave the heads alone, all's fair in love and cabbage.
Thanks to all the Michael Jackson video-watching (I almost never tire of watching some of those videos), some good progress has been made on the red scarf. I do love this color of KnitPicks Swish (Fired Brick), and though this mindless scarf is all I can handle right now, at least it's a little bit of something for this poor little ole knitting blog.
I've got sort of a busy week coming up, though there is no work-work scheduled. Tomorrow I provide lunch to the workers at a Habitat for Humanity building site. You just know they be gettin' some home-grown lettuce in their sandwiches. I sure do wish I had some of AnnaMarie's homemade bread, but they'll have to settle for store-bought. It should be interesting for me to manage preparing food for, and serving, a group of people, since I will be on a liquid-diet cleanse that day to get ready for my Tuesday, ahem, medical procedure. Ergh.
Then there's this antique transcript I need to try to get out, assuming I can still read the steno. Court reporters will love this: The court hearing was done in 1989. Yes, I kid you not. Twenty years ago. Let me see if there might be any issues with this: I had just upgraded my computer system at that time, from the old system that took up an entire room in my house and about five laborious steps to create a transcript -- took the whole night to translate a file that I then had to heavily edit. First it was written on a digital tape, which was put into a tape-reader and put onto an -- are you sitting down? -- 8-inch floppy disk, which took like an hour (which at that time we thought was lightning fast)! That then was put into a computer to read and try to match the steno to English. Then I edited it -- which was a lengthy and labor-intensive process, and then it was printed on a dot matrix printer. It took a couple hours to print a half-hour court hearing, and several hours to print a day's worth. There was carbon-interleaved paper, the edges of which I had to tear off, rip apart each page, take out the carbons, and collate the multiple copies.
So in 1989, I was now up to a new system that had a five-inch disk and about two fewer steps. It was a bit faster, but I can no longer read those disks, because since that time I have changed computer systems three more times, and that's not even counting the generations of software. But also: Since that time, my steno theory was ripped out, stripped down to its nakedness; I was lashed and thrashed and trashed, and lowered to my lowest point; and right when I was at the point where I would almost rather choose suicide than go on, I was retaught how to write, and I have continued to modify it and tweak it and make it the perfect fit so now I can write realtime steno in practically whatever subject you throw at me with only the occasional kooky error such as the other night, "as pennies" came out "aspenis." The speaker had earlier asked the question, "How many of you pick up a penny when you see it lying on the ground?" and later tied that in by saying that some people treat other people as pennies, i.e., worthless.
So "aspenis" for "as pennies." That's a word boundary error. I had defined AS/PEN as "aspen," and the "-ies" ending decided to translate, in one of those moments of artificial intelligence gone terribly wrong, as "-is" so it almost looked like (but thank goodness it did not, quite) as "as penis," but in any event it translated as a NONword. Ah, yes, it's always something....that's the third sure thing, after death and taxes.
Anyway, I have procrastinated taking a look at those musty, moldy steno notes that the court sent me because some guy wants to know some little detail in them. I seriously doubt if I can read them, and I really probably should have just looked at them when they were first sent to me so I could just certify that, "Forget it, bub. It's been 20 freakin' years. Get over it." So I have to do that this week.
In yet another blog non sequitur, the asparagus from the previously ailing bed continues to grow and produce, and ahhhh, here is a beautiful sight:
The new asparagus bed is freshly weeded and OMG, I found all these little asparagus ferns coming up. After a few rains and some time, and the rock phosphate feeding, it is indeed coming alive. That is not the 30 roots that I planted by a long shot, but I have confidence that more will come up. Can I get a woohoo?! After the weeding shown above, I spread four bags of Intervale compost, some more lime, and some more rock phosphate over and around it, and watered it in. I am going to get a bale of straw to mulch it, and I think that next year we will be swimming in asparagus.
I have put in a brand new grow bed:
Ahhhh, it's like a fresh canvas. I put in a bean tower and planted it with Dolloff beans (a true Vermont heirloom shell bean) sent to me by the Extreme Gardener. I also put in a fresh planting of arugula, Renee's Stir Fry mix, Romaine, and basil seeds. When I started, I intended to put in beets and bush beans. I have no idea how I got off track like that, but apparently the canvas spoke to me.
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