Homes tour beat-down

And the one that got beat down was me. Six hours on a west-facing front porch Saturday, three hours Sunday, at temperatures ranging from 88° to 106°, dressed in full 19th-century artisan costume including Derby hat.  The only reason I survived at all was a 20-mile wind that blew all day long, both days.  Nor did it help that I was stuck as house captain on a house that was completely uninteresting architecturally, and I had to try to sound happy and engaged about that.

M is gone to Girl Scout riding camp this week, so L and I have the house to ourselves.

Posted in Neighborhood | 2 Comments

All on my одинок

L and M left for the state square dance festival at noon, and won’t be back until Sunday.  This leaves me with a weekend, and nothing more to fill it up with than a blood-bank appointment tomorrow morning.

DO NOT WANT.

Posted in Minutiae | 2 Comments

“Your friend,” said Eeyore, “appears to have bitten on a bee.”

I just sliced a tiny strip out of the banana pepper I harvested yesterday, to see how it tastes.

HOT.

It’s no hotter than a good pickled jalapeño, I suppose, but plenty hot enough to get my attention. It ought to be good sautéed with scrambled eggs or that.

Posted in Food and Cooking, Gardening | 1 Comment

Oh, rot!

The Roma tomatoes are setting fruit, but they’ve also developed blossom-end rot, caused by calcium deficiency.  Spray-on calcium supplements have been bought, and will be applied shortly.  The Sweet Millions, however, continue to produce pretty little grape-sized fruit steadily.

And today I harvested the first banana pepper, not fully ripe but bright orange.

Posted in Gardening | 3 Comments

Saturday

Today is the day to:

  • Put another $50 worth of gas into Tom Done.
  • Thin the squash seedlings Done .
  • Get a trellis/cage for said squash seedlings Done.
  • Water the garden bed and apply diatomaceous earth to keep down the flea hoppers Done.
  • Vote in city council elections Done.
  • Contemplate reimaging Syd
  • Contemplate the pot of beans I cooked last night, as lunch

 

The first thing to understand about the rules of fnord is that there are no rules.

Posted in Minutiae | Comments Off on Saturday

It POURED today

Today Austin got hammered by a BIG line of rainstorms, that dropped between two and three inches onto the city and knocked out power in several areas, including The Old Gray House.  This ran L nuts, because the UPS alarm went off and KEPT going off because she didn’t know where the OFF button was.  That has been fixed, and she knows where to look next time.

While the rain was hugely needed, and will help, it doesn’t come close to getting us out of the woods.  Even with today’s rain, we’s still minus seven inches since last fall, which is a huge lot.  Gonna continue to be another bad, dry year, I think.

However, my raised bed is still having a fine time and I now have a new crop to replace the stuff that flopped:  crookneck squash.  I sprinkled a packet of seeds across two square feet, and I have a couple of dozen seedlings.  In a few days I’ll have to start thinning, and then go look for some cages to grow the squashes into, ’cos I don’t want them trailing across the yard.

And for some godsbedamned reason, my vinyl-ripping setup is on the fritz.  The problem appears to be on the computer side of the setup.  The ripped CDs all sound like they have a once-per-revolution cut-out, but I haven’t been able to isolate where the failure is.  I’m afraid I may have to resort to reimaging Syd and Pitr both, if I can’t find some other cause soon.

 

The plastic people are the property of their fnord.

Posted in Austin, Gardening, Minutiae | Comments Off on It POURED today

We get tenants

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of wood chips in the back yard, even to the point of finding them caught in the car’s windshield wipers of a morning.  At first I thought it was from the carpenter bees, which I’ve got in the firewood rack, but there were too many chips for less than a hive full of bees to produce, and carpenter bees are solitary.

Friday I solved the mystery.  As I got home from work and out of the car, I happened to look up and catch a red-bellied woodpecker hanging onto the highest branch of The Shedding Tree, right at the edge of a big hole he’d drilled.  Two other big holes further up the same branch suggest that he’s been using the tree, which is full of borers and carpenter ants, as his feeder for some time, or perhaps that some of his friends have moved in as well.

 

The crew cleaned up after a Saturday night fire damaged the fnord center.

Posted in House | 1 Comment

I B smokin 2morra

Yeah, so it’s been months since the last time I made a fire in the smoker and smoked a piece of meat, so today I bought a packer-trimmed brisket at HEB and tomorrow I’m going to smoke it.  I also bought a couple of six-packs to keep company with while the smoking is going on.

The thing is, sitting outdoors by yourself baby-sitting a fire is REALLY BORING, so I wouldn’t mind having company during the day while I’m baby-sitting.  Beer, iced tea, and insect repellent will be available, bring yer favorite soda water if yer partial to them.

 

I really could just pay someone to clean all the fnord for me.

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Hay tomates

The Sweet Millions have set a whole fistful of itty-bitty fruit, and the Romas have taken to blooming, while the banana peppers do both.  The bell peppers, disappointingly, have only put on leaves and no blossoms or fruit.

The second Magic Mountain basil plant surprised me by coming back to life after a couple of good waterings, while the cilantro crapped out completely.  Well, all right—the hell with it, I’ll figure out something different to do there.

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O, le garbage!

I was going to work-from-home today, since M has Good Friday off from school and L has gone off to the Texas Folklore Society annual meeting with Mother and Chris.  However, that was before my keyboard decided the letter X wasn’t going to work any longer, despite disassembly and cleaning.  So instead, M and I drove up to Circulith so I could put in a day’s work from my desk at the Empire, and on the way home I stopped at Fry’s and spent $50 I didn’t really want to spend on a new M$ ergo keyboard.

And then we stopped at Joann’s, and got stared at like Martians when I asked for a darning egg, which they naturally failed to have any of.  (To make it worse, I had to explain what darning is.  To a fabric store clerk.  To two fabric store clerks.)

Posted in Empire, Minutiae, Work (WORK!!?!??!) | Tagged , | 11 Comments