Earwigs

What's different? What's missing?



I dug these out last week. Yes, I am tired. They were going to be in the way of the porch renovation. And give me a shovel and a place to dig, I'm pretty happy.


"FIRST!"


One sunflower a'bloomin'. More to come. Bergamot lovely. New rose has a few wee buds. Tomato plants mostly thriving. Set out oil trap for earwigs, and caught an impressive number. They are flourishing, so I need to reduce their numbers. Also the nasty spike grass, that I didn't recognize as such, has taken over. Too dry to dig up now, so I laid cardboard over it, weighted with pavers. In the fall, more digging, and more wheat and rye, maybe clover. Every June, I find out what I did wrong this year, and plan to correct.

Vestige

Took care of a child this past week. As he was going under, he apparently lost bladder control. I don't know how usual this is with children, since I take care of so few. But a lot of young boys have bedwetting issues, so I assume it's pretty common.

Which made me wonder if this is not a bug, but a feature. That it has some evolutionary advantage. When the hunters go out with a young boy, does his involuntary urine odor in the night perhaps repel predators? Maybe something specific in the chemical makeup that is effective? Or just that it's fresh in the wee (ha!) hours? That it's sensed by the grown men as a lucky thing to have an annoying young boy along?

In the modern world, it's rather a problem. But it may have provided enough advantage throughout our long evolutionary past to be retained in our bodies.

We are junkshops, never know when that might be needed, no throwing anything away completely.

Just as we have the ability to deal with cruel leadership. Probably as common as egalitarian governance in our species' histories. We have so many ways to react, adapt, endure. We are all about survival, at the expense of comfort. Time circles round.

Placebo

I got a daith piercing today. Hoping for migraine relief, since I already know acupuncture works for me. If it's a placebo, doesn't mean it won't work. Falls under can't hurt to try. It's rather pretty, too. Well, it can, but the risk benefit ratio is benign.

Piercer was covered in tattoos and piercings, but a smile, and his clear kind eyes told me he saw me. Which was worth it all alone. I've found this before, that people with a hostile presentation are often the sweetest people ever. Learned this most deeply in the army, everyone wore the same uniform, so the real personality shone through. Scales fell from my eyes in those years, I became far less distracted by surfaces. I could tell this man also saw past surfaces, even in the business of altering them. He saw through my drabness as well. We cultivate our camouflage, we who are not, and have no wish to be, mainstream normal.

The process was only momentarily painful. A dull ache. And within a few minutes, the same sense of easing as after an acupuncture moment. The headache that had been building was gone. Possibly just by suggestion, but I've always been open to suggestion.

This is a long healing process, cartilage being avascular. A puncture. The little ring is blue, pleases me in itself.



Taking what comforts I may.

Dug

This is Coco. Coco came in with a young human friend, so he got a hat (from a hospital sock) and a bandage on his elbow (purple coban so as not to pull on his fur) and a sling (from a mask). A new, but patient and faithful friend.

Doing a bit better these days, focus is still on the elephant rampaging. Dug in, no panic, just that steady stream to get through.

Spending time every day watering tomatoes and establishing plants. Fennel coming up in the back. Planning for fall, wheat around the edges, sunflowers along the fence in back, moving the black iris bulbs.

Midget

My Mexico Midget tomato plant... has a little tomato forming already.


I am aghast and delighted.

It's like a poodle. You may think it's fussy, but it's an old breed that had undergone centuries, if not millennia of natural selection.

Stroll around the front garden.




And a peek in back.

Expiration

I got a bit sucked up in an unreliable corner of the twitterverse. With a nudge, I realized and pulled myself out. Feeling a bit better now. I much prefer real work to false hope. Neither salvation nor doom survive the specific expiration date. My skepticism held, just stretched a bit.

The garden helps. Just keeps growing.



Got asked for ID to get beer. Could have been due to the blue/purple hair. I know my face does not look younger than 30, but I would never question a cashier. Pull out my ID, say I never get asked, amused, no argument.



One day, in the hopefully not too distant future, I will be writing here a LOT. Right now, too much in the middle, can't work through any of it yet. So, I'll keep the garden records, leave a hint, get back when I can.

Cheat

I went to a church Easter party, about 5 or 6 years old. There was a jar of candies, and we could guess how many. The prize was a lovely, very real, brown/grey stuffed bunny.

I guessed right, remarkably close to the real number.

As I sat on the church steps, waiting to be picked up, holding my new cuddly, some bigger girls came up and took it from me, saying I'd cheated. They were much bigger, and I could do nothing to stop them. I got in trouble for sitting outside waiting alone to be picked up.

My mother told the priest, and the church folks got me another bunny, bright yellow. Not in any way the same, and although I tried my best to be grateful, what I really wanted was that real looking bunny back from the mean girls.

Today, I have a stuffed bunny, and a lamb, some teddy bears and a moose. Two lovely real cats.

And I still think about that lost bunny.

Being cheated sets steel in people.

Got to the Wasatch Community Garden's Plant Sale on Saturday. Two each, Mexico Midget and Roma tomato plants. Idaho blue fescue grass, bee balm, raspberries. The latter to the back garden that prefers weeds, being I suspect tree root poisoned. So, if raspberries take over, I'll call it good. Invasive vs invasive.

Knocked

Every year there is a city Neighborhood Clean Up. We put out unwanted stuff, pickers whittle down the piles, and eventually the city picks up what is left.

I found this metal basin, much rusted, but with a strange framing beauty.

Everything is blooming madly. I put in pansies, and some columbine.



Young woman asked me if anyone ever knocked over my rock balances. Sure, so do I, and birds, and strong winds... I just put them back up. She said ok. Not what she expected perhaps.

This is what we do. Lives get knocked over, we pick them up.

And France did the right thing, which leaves me with a modicum of hope.

Vive La Resistance! I wrote that in chalk on our sidewalk.

Insistence

Poppy, Iris, Iris, Veronica, Rose.



All buds and hope. But the black iris that never bloomed last year, and looked like it wouldn't this year, has grown expectant. And the rose is alive! It's ALIVE!

Despite everything, I have decided this afternoon to trust that Obama out maneuvered the conman. Knew he was in a war, accepted that there would be casualties, and set up a strategy, with fall backs and contingencies.

Woke yesterday in the early hours, ill and in a lot of pain. My upper back has been worsening, and I've done a lot, but not enough, to calm it down. I think it became a migraine by morning. Threw everything at the pain all day, ice, massage, acupuncture, drugs, exercise, ice. By bedtime, I felt appreciably better. Still tender today, need to attack it again, but finally feeling progress.

Nothing like pain to sap energy.

And now, buds. Spring is insisting.

Plot

I was warned the mint would take over. So has the lemon balm, and the catnip is establishing itself.



Given the ivy and weeds, I accept this.

Poppies and tall grasses welcome.



Golden Celebration rose looking promising. Really, it is.


Lambs tongue, bergamot and catnip.


Allium blooming.Prickly pear.



Verge, with wheat and rye grasses. Weeds at bay.



My little bit of ground, that I am responsible for.