Photo cross-post
Jul. 1st, 2025 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"Sophia, will you pose with your brother for a photo?"
"I will, but I'm very angry about it!"
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
"Sophia, will you pose with your brother for a photo?"
"I will, but I'm very angry about it!"
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Wot a saga, eh, wot a saga, first time I have ventured significantly forth these many years -
And to start with, MAJOR HEAT EVENT.
In anticipation, I had - or so I thought - prudently booked a taxi via taxiapp, with a certain amount of leeway, just in case -
- which turned out very prudent, as when I went to check the booking this morning the app was showing 'network error' and this was clearly on their end rather than mine, and a little looking about suggests that this is not their first rodeo server problem.
So when, at designated time, taxi cameth not, I set out towards the Tube, not without some hope that a black cab might pass me on my way, but that Was Not To Be -
And on reflection, I should perhaps have waited for a Bank train, because getting out on Charing X platforms at Euston involves rather too many stairs.
However, Avanti kindly texted me the approx time my train would be boarding, and this all seemed set - although my (1st class) seat was aisle, backwards, there was nobody in the other 3 seats so I switched -
HAH.
When we reached Coventry, choochoo sighed and gave up, and we had to debouch and take the next Birmingham bound train - which was delayed....
At Birmingham New Street had considerable faff trying to discover a Way Out that would take me to a taxi rank.
When I finally arrived at hotel booked by conference organisers there was an immense performance trying to find the right group booking, as it was not under any title that I might have thought of but that of some hireling booking agency.
However, I am now in nice cool room and have had tasty room service snack. Even if I have had to wrestle with getting my laptop to talk to the free wifi...
How is it the end of June already? Where did it go?
And tomorrow I have to travel to Birmingham for a conference.
I am telling myself that I survived the Hot Summer of 76 in an un-airconditioned office where, if one opened a window in came the noise and fumes of a heavily traffic-polluted thoroughfare.
Of course, I was Much Younger in those days.
I see that it is supposed to get somewhat cooler (and wetter) on Weds.
We had a nice day on the beach in North Berwick. A few of Sophia's old
nursery friends, getting back together, with a few siblings thrown in.
They got on like it wasn't mostly a year since they last saw each
other, and they had a ball digging holes, wading through seaweed and
climbing on rocks. The weather was just as fabulous as it looks
here.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
I’ve blogged for basically my entire adult life.
LiveJournal, Tumblr, WordPress, here. There’s something about having a corner of the internet that’s mine - a space that isn’t a feed, isn’t an algorithm, isn’t speeding past at a thousand miles an hour. I miss that.
Lately, I’ve mostly been posting on Tumblr about tennis. And I love talking about tennis, but it’s started to feel like that’s all I do.
I go to work, I watch matches, I read. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I stare at the same three WIPs and hope they move. I’ve been telling myself that doesn’t leave me with much to say. But maybe that’s not true. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.
So: I’m coming back to Dreamwidth. I want this to be a quieter space. A bit rambly. A bit nostalgic. More fandom and life and writing and less “keeping up.”
I’m really hoping the new sunshine_revival community will help with that too - it feels exciting, like something gentle and welcoming is starting to grow again. I’m looking forward to seeing what the prompts will be.
I also need to figure out commenting again. I overthink it. I draft something and delete it and worry it sounds weird or too much or not enough. But I want to try. I miss the part where we actually talked to each other.
What you’ll probably find here:
Here’s to slow internet, quiet posting, and the kind of connection that doesn’t need to be loud to be real.
Last week's bread held out pretty well.
Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari).
Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones loosely based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread, 50:50% strong white/einkorn flour, perhaps a little lacking in the mace department.
Today's lunch: (this ran into several difficulties including oven problems and a pyrex plate going smash on the floor, but got there in the end) salmon fillets baked in foil with butter, salt, pepper and dill, served with baby Jersey Royal Potatoes boiled and tossed in butter, garlic-roasted tenderstem broccoli, and white-braised green beans with sliced baby red pepper.
I had such a good time with my garden last season. It was the first time I had ever capital-t Tended a garden in my life, and it was a deeply meaningful experience for me. I learned a lot about myself in the process, because I kept allowing my garden to be a metaphor. Also, I had more tomatoes than I could give away, the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen, peppers forever, and sunflowers that went up to here.
I have been intensely focused on CPTSD recovery from child abuse for a couple of years. I work on it in therapy every week, and I work on it in between sessions, when I’m able. Walking my garden twice a day gave me lots of opportunities to reflect on The Work that I was doing, and I’m pretty sure it gave me an extra d4+1 on all my saves.
I live in zone 10B, and we can grow just about anything here, all year long, if we’re willing to do some extra work during the frigid 40 degree nights we endure for up to a whole week every January. I’ve never done that before, because I’ve never felt connected enough to my garden to get the winter survival gear out of the trunk.
But this past winter, I thought I’d give it a go. I looked into it, and saw that most of the winter stuff available to me didn’t interest me enough to plant and Tend it. But I read about planting a cover crop, and that sounded pretty cool. I liked the idea of putting a ton of seeds down and staying out of their way while they did their thing for a couple of months.
I ended up choosing a mixture of oats, peas, and radishes. I cut everything down to a nub, to let the roots die off and nourish the soil, and tossed the seeds all over the place.
Over the winter, they sprouted and grew into one hell of a cover crop. The peas produced beautiful, delicate, purple and white flowers. The oats got so tall, and surprisingly smelled kind of sweet, too. Marlowe loved eating big blades of grass every day. I noticed that they sort of whistled or hummed softly when the breeze was just right. Depending on the sunlight, they looked green or blue.
About a month ago, they started to dry up. Marlowe lost interest in the grass, which I presume wasn’t as sweet as it was when it was still cold at night. Anne and I planned this season’s garden, with fewer tomatoes, and I began to prepare the planting beds.
I started clearing the cover crop out, one section at a time. The peas were all dead and crumbled in my hands. I turned them into the soil. There was one radish, a big daikon-looking thing that filled the air with a spicy blast when I yanked it up. Then there were the oats, three and four feet tall, growing in thick clumps that formed a tiny forest for ants. I pulled them out, one at a time, shaking all the soil off the roots. Dust clung to my hands and forearms.
I started on one side, and worked my way down and around, one clump at a time. The soil came up and fell off the roots easily. It fell back into fluffy mounds that I swept into the holes left behind. I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my right hand, then wiped the mud I’d left behind with my left hand. I tried both forearms before I started laughing and accepted my muddy forehead.
I kept working, silently thanking the oats for doing exactly what they were asked to do as I cleared one and then the next and the next.
I blinked sweat out of my eyes, shook some mud off my head, and looked at the newly-cleared garden. The soil was fluffy and rich. Loamy, I think they call it. It was ready for the growing season, and I was ready to plant it.
But first, in the final corner, there were a couple clumps of very tall, very thick, oats to pull out. I considered leaving them, so Marlowe could continue to have her grass snacks, but she hasn’t been that interested for about two weeks, at least.
“You have done all that was asked of you,” I said, “you can rest, now.” I wrapped my hand about the base of the clump nearest to me and gently pulled it up. I shook the soil out of its roots, put it to the side, and moved on to the next one. I stopped suddenly and stared through the little forest.
There was a deep green … something … against the wooden edge of the planter. Some kind of hornworm, maybe? A beetle I’ve never seen before? What the hell is that?
I parted the stalks and saw a single jalapeño hanging from the top of a single stalk. The nub I cut back at the end of last year, safely hidden by the cover crop, grew back at some point, flowered, and produced a single, perfect, beautiful fruit while nobody was looking, or expecting anything from it. I looked closer and two additional flowers revealed themselves.
I cleared the remaining oats, careful to not disturb my unexpected jalapeño. It’s obviously thriving, but the flowers are so delicate before they begin to bear fruit; they must be treated with care, even if that just means being careful around them. It’s good to do that, from time to time, I think: remember to take care. We can easily damage something we aren’t even thinking about, when we are careless.
I didn’t expect anything from the cover crop. I just put it down and hoped the seeds would grow. I didn’t expect anything from this jalapeño. In fact, Mr. Bond, I expected it to die.
It’s amazing what happens when we plant seeds, and tend to our gardens, without any expectations, isn’t it?
But this is just plain bizarre: reading the AI summaries rather than watching the series or presumably, reading books.
What is even gained thereby?
It's so massively Point Thahr Misst about why one consumes story-telling that I can't even.
Why not just go straight to: this work manifests [whichever of the whatever the allegedly number it is of standard plots it is] tout court?
I guess these are the people that live on Soylent and pride themselves on 'rawdogging' airflights?
Have they completely eliminated enjoyment and fun from their lives, and if so, WHY????
Conversely, and in the interests of pleasure, there has recently opened a bookshop entirely dedicated to romance, in Notting Hill. (I do cringe a bit at calling it 'Saucy Books'.)
Back in the day, in Charing Cross Road, there used to be a dedicated Romance section alongside Murder One and the SFF section in the basement, all in one bookshop, but that has long been one with the dodo.