Sooo, what am I doing, both the empty Twitter and Facebook boxes are asking me?

a. Getting ready to go on holidays! This means, not that I am actually GOING anywhere, but that I am not going to work for at least six (6) consecutive days. And I am trying to pick out books to read. And some of these books are not in my library, so I am having to buy them from Chapters. I don't want to buy them. But I have to. Because of  holidays, you see?

b. Going to my garden. Except that it has been raining, like Noah-level raining, for days and days here so actually going outside is not fun, and when I tried it on Tuesday, I fell down my front stairs in my slippery flip-flops and ended up with these bright purple bumpy bruises on various parts of my body. It's like Edmonton was reminding me, Stay inside, or something even worse will happen. (This sounds funny, but actually it was terrible, because of the pain; and also, I'm well aware that limping around after claiming to have fallen down some stairs is basically a covert way to beg your co-workers to call social services. The fact that one of the bruises is the exact size of my porch railing is good evidence for the truth, though.) So instead I have been working my way through The Alberta Native Plants Council's Native Plants Source List and compiling my own garden wishlist and figuring out where I can get the plants on that list and where I should plant them. Surprisingly, my husband does not want to drive to Black Diamond, Alberta this weekend to pick up plants for me. I have no idea why. I thought he loved me.

c. Reading this essay from the New Yorker, Advanced Placement, about the Gossip Girl books, and it is kind of making me want to read them again, which is weird. I read the first six or seven books in the series and then grew kind of disgusted with myself and there were even a couple paperbacks I had bought (because I was not willing to wait for them to be returned to the library, shame on me) and I even donated those TO the library because I kind of didn't want the evidence of my compulsion to exist anymore. But now it seems like perhaps I was missing whole layers.

d. Thinking about fonts, because in addition to the Comic Sans shout-out I posted from McSweeney's a couple weeks ago, I recently encountered The Helvetica Killer, about Aktiv Grotesk, which (its designer hopes) could be the font to bring Helvetica down. (I know that on the Internet, this is equivalent to posting that you hate the iPhone or orphans or cute puppies, but I've never understood what all the fuss was about, Helvetica-wise.) And Papyrus Watch, which reports on Papyrus spottings in the wild. I used Papyrus once for some shirts I screenprinted (they read "I'll be in my bunk") and ever since then I see it EVERYWHERE. The hierarchy of fonts is complex, Internet. You never know who you might offend with your typeface. At this point, 30% of my original readers have jumped ship due to the verdana overload.

Man, seeing this blog entry you would think I was a total nerd, and you wouldn't know I'm actually, as Veronica Mars would say, 30% danger-loving girl-touching rock star.

Abandon ship!

I know I'm lame, but lately all I feel like writing about is my garden. So I decided to try one of those specialty blogs I keep hearing about. I know, right? Apaprently people like reading blogs all about a single topic! So: Dispatches From Zone 3a. I'll still be here, maybe, from time to time, if I have anything non-gardening-related to contribute.

sometimes i think things

i. sometimes i think that my plants might have been planted a bit too early since they are basically already giant and i have run out of room for them under the lights again and the zucchini are taking over my basement just like they always take over the garden when you plant them outside. safe transplant date still 3 weeks away! but on the other hand, when i am at work i think about them all the time and it makes me feel like i can keep working. so, that's something.

ii. sometimes i think the universe is showing me things just because they make pretty colour combinations and for no other reason. "yellow, orange, red... you know who would appreciate that? Jocelyn." hmmm.

iii. sometimes i think maybe i don't need to have a blog anymore.

not for eating

photo.jpg, originally uploaded by jocelynb.

I am making my own organic fertilizer... this is the bucket. I decorated it.

Holy courgettes, batman!

I planted these costata romanesco zucchini seeds on Sunday. 72 hours from planting to sprouts-- that's a new record for me! I'm already contemplating what spot in the garden will be ideal for such a vigorous plant.

I've been pretty much planting 2 seeds to a cell for larger seeds, and 3 or more seeds to a cell for smaller seeds. This is because I wasn't sure what my germination rates would be like, and I didn't want to deal with the heartbreak of empty pots. What I have instead is the heartbreak of pulling slightly smaller, less robust plants. It goes against all my instincts. I'm rooting (heh) for the underdog! If Hollywood movies have taught us anything, it's that!

Gardening: it's the opposite of a Hollywood movie.

Update from Zone 3A

It is getting to be-- well, not spring, that's too strong a word; but warmer outside, and the perennials in my raised beds are showing signs of life. I started seeds from scratch this year, which I have never done before, and as a pretty n00b gardener it might have been overambitious. But ever since I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I've been a bit obsessed with heirloom vegetables, and starting with seed is the only real way to get them. Plus it extends the gardening season a bit earlier, which is great. By March I am inevitably stir-crazy and depressed, and this year the seeds have been a really lovely distraction from waiting for the outdoors to warm up. I go check on them several times a day, which I guess is goofy, but I do feel a very strong sense of ownership and responsibility for them. It feels like Spring in my basement grow-op, even though outside is still pretty miserable.

So anyway, I've had good luck given my already-mentioned n00b-ness, with almost everything I planted coming up. The first peppers to sprout were wiped out in a mini-drought, and the strawberries I planted showed no signs whatsoever of being alive or, in fact, given their tininess, of even existing after I had planted them. But everything else has sprouted, and I do not allow myself to become downtrodden, for now I have 30-ish little sprouts including peppers, three kinds of tomatoes, and Armenian cucumbers (!). This past weekend I planted zucchini, and that is the last of the indoor starts, I think. In my outside beds I will plant snow peas, snap peas and regular peas; asparagus (don't know if those will grow, but we'll give it a try!), onions, some herbs, and numerous flowers. This means, if course, that I will also be building more raised beds. When we bought our house, I wonder if my husband ever thought we might have an actual yard-- or if he knew that, inevitably, the whole space would be turned into garden? Oh well. At least I haven't torn down the garage. (Yet-- I'm not saying I never will, because it actually occupies far-and-away the best part of the property, sun-wise.)

I ordered heirloom seeds from:
West Coast Seeds (in BC)
Heritage Harvest Seeds (Manitoba)
Casey's Heirloom Tomatoes (Airdrie, AB)
I am also growing lots of plants from seeds I got at the local Bedrock Seed Bank. I ordered some from their website, but I've also picked up seeds from their booth at the Strathcona Farmers' Market, and I pre-ordered a flat of their alpine strawberries which will be ready in June (after my own failure to sprout anything).

I like ordering from Canadian companies-- partly to support Canadian businesses, but also (let's face it) because I don't want to mess around with plants that won't grow here. Even the BC one made me a bit suspicious. The colder and more miserable it is in these plants' province of origin, the better. And! The seed catalogues! They're wonderful. Seed catalogues are like the future, in the sense that they are so beautifully full of promise and romance.

Because I am thrifty to the point of cheapness, I have been saving plastic food containers of all kinds over the past few months, and so in the photo above you can see the sprouts growing under roast-chicken and ice-cream-cake greenhouses. This has become a kind of running joke in our house-- you never know when I am going to want to claim something destined for the recycling for my garden. James will hold up a random piece of near-garbage and say dubiously, "do you want this for your garden?"

Yes. Yes I do.

Where are the Daily Things of yesteryear?

I was at IKEA again last night and I was pretty excited to find this PS FEJO plant pot (with an umlaut, which I am too lazy to locate on the character map). I bought one so I could put it together and judge whether I thought it would work; now that I believe it would, I might go back and buy another one. It was $30, which is kind of expensive for a pot (especially from IKEA, where sofas are in the $75-$80 range), but it seems to have a pretty intelligent design and I like that it has integrated wheels. I bought seeds for several pot-friendly varieties of peppers and tomatoes so I have high hopes for this enterprise.

The problem that remains is that it is February, and it is weeks before I can even start the inside plants, still.

The other problem is that I was supposed to be doing thing-a-day, but I got a bit busy and distracted and now it seems almost dumb to try to get back into it for, what, three days? although I have tomorrow and then the weekend off so perhaps it is a possibility.

The last problem is that I started reading City of Bones, which is book one of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Trilogy, and (although I'm aware of being a bit late to the party here) it's really, really good. So mainly I just want to read that, and ignore everything else, except plant pots of course.

strictly legal plants.

I have been meaning to buy a new plant light for awhile. The week (marked in my calendar with green!) when I can start the earliest of the inside seeds is approaching. So today I finally got it ready. James and I went to Home Depot for the fixture, and then I attached it to a piece of wood I already had hanging around and added hooks to the corners so I can suspend it from pieces of chain (which I haven't gotten yet). This should make it easy to move it up as the seedlings get higher.

I also have a heat mat. I'm hoping that these two together will make up for the dismal cold in my basement (which is the only place where there is enough space for starting seeds). In about five weeks I can start with the peppers.

This has also been quite a productive weekend for chores and other boring things, and I got to see one of my favourite babies (as well as his favourite parents), and I finished a very good book (Robyn Okrant's Living Oprah), so I guess I can't complain. On Friday night James and I went to see A Single Man, which I rather enjoyed, although (spoiler alert!) it totally American Beauty-ed us in the end. Colin Firth was in it, looking handsome, as usual.

I'm going to look for some chocolate chips.

----------------
Now playing: Tegan and Sara - My Number
via FoxyTunes

Day 7

Today: Plant Labels. I'm boring, but at least I made something. Something WITH CLIP ART.

It feels like I used up all my weekend much too fast. I need a mulligan.

DAY 2

Thing a day 2: New pens + winter fatigue = seeds sorted.

The sources of my satisfaction:

A sort of disturbingly enthusiastic exaltation of domesticity.

My first roasted chicken + gravy
>Stock from scratch
>>Soup, jambalaya, + a couple containers for the freezer
>>>Cheese biscuits

A good book (Farm City) finished
>And two more promising ones from the stacks

A really, really excellently large messenger bag, now adorned with girl scout patches

A big [work] website project finished
>And a clean desk
>>And a price of living raise
>>>And the amount of my student loan payments increased

A programmable thermostat
>And a heated dog bed purchased out of guilt at how our dog constantly searches for the warmest spot in the house

Heirloom vegetable seeds ordered
>And some herbs planted with seeds from the farmer's market, to grow in green pots in my kitchen

A doomed-seeming pug declined
>My first "dungeon deserter" debuff
>>Means I am not a pushover or a masochist.

Pug aside: skip at will.
[i had spent several hours the day before running the same dungeon--Halls of Reflection-- on the same difficulty setting-- Heroic; not to boast, but this is the hardest 5-person content in the game. And our really, really good group wiped over and over. So I was a bit reticent to commit to it again, let alone with a group of strangers. And in this random group our tank had made some pretty poor gear choices, which was strike 2. This was strike 3:]
Jocelyn: i was really hoping it wouldn't be this one :)
Group leader: suck it up
Group leader: let's go
Group leader: kill mages first
Jocelyn: wow, thanks... friendly
Group leader: u r welcome
Jocelyn: /quits group

I felt guilty for 10 seconds, then... exuberant.

at least, i hope so

James just bought an xBox and Halo: OCD (or whatever it's called), so as I write this I can hear the cast of Firefly shouting about aliens in the basement. Surreal.

I'm really enjoying Novella Carpenter's book Farm City, but it's got me longingly dreaming of the summer. She writes about farming on an abandoned lot in Oakland, CA, which obviously has its challenges-- but 7 or so months of winter is not one of them. To cheer myself up a bit, I'm deciding which varieties of vegetables to plant this summer and I have some order forms printed out and ready to send, cheques signed. (Cheques! It's so cute! The people who own heirloom seed companies apparently don't really do PayPal.) I have ambitions to start my own seeds indoors this spring and give away the extra plants come May. To that end, I also bought a digital timer today which can be used to time the additional lights I'll need for my flats of plants. In the meantime, James has it hooked up to our oil pan heater in the car. Sigh, winter. I wish I could quit you.

ALSO! Today we delivered some cookies to our neighbours, put in a programmable thermostat, and roasted a farmer's market chicken. It was almost too wholesome to stand. I had never cooked a whole chicken before, but it turned out delicious, and there is something satisfying about pulling apart the meat and dividing it up into containers for lunches and soup. This was also my first foray into making gravy, and it was even delicious-er. It turns out that making gravy is EASY; our mothers have been lying to us all these years, trying to make themselves appear indispensable. Tomorrow I will make stock. I have been muttering the word mirepoix to myself all day in anticipation.

2010 is the year I stop doing frivolous things, like getting married and buying houses, and focus on more important things like reading books and growing Black Hungarian peppers and cooking soups. I have also hatched a plan to paint my basement an insouciant turquoise colour.

I think it's going to be good.

Gertrude just hasn't seen my zucchini

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. -Gertrude Stein

you do care about all the minutiae of my life, right? internet?

i grew these zucchini. with my own HANDS AND BLOOD. i love these squash so much i could squash them!

Before and after

Check it: My plants have grown. They did it so slowly I hardly noticed.

garden addendum

I forgot to mention that, because it's my own particular brand of nerdy, I bought one of these garden tool journals from disconsolator on etsy. I like to keep notebooks for everything, and if the notebook is appropriate to the task, so much the better.

holy moley, Internet. apparently i never update my blog anymore. GOOD TO KNOW!

what has happened in the past week?
NOTHING!

it is one month until my wedding. however, I do not like my wedding so instead I am going to talk about my garden.

my garden is getting mixed reviews (from me--no one else can be bothered to review my garden). It has really been too sunny, and dry for anything to get much growing done. some of the plants are growing. others appear to be dying. my citrus mint's leaves are changing colours radically and i'm not sure if this is good or bad. my broccoli are flourishing. my tomatoes are wilting. (to be honest i just planted the broccoli because i was sort of curious about them--like, i wanted to know how broccoli even grow, under the ground or on vines or what?!? and instead they are the best of my plants.)

i wish i knew a really good gardener who could identify all the plants planted by the last owners of my house, based on photos. i should have some kind of flickr-based contest my co-workers could participate in, with prizes. i definitely have a white lilac and also a grape vine (!) which I thought was dead but which has since been revived. i had to do some Internet Research to find out how to care for it. Apparently grape vines are a tough-love plant. you have to prune them like crazy and they don't really need good soil or fertilizer. so i went at mine with pruning shears and now it has a bunch of new leaves. it's attached to the side of the house with a trellis so ancient it looks like it could be covered in hieroglyphics if we could somehow get the vine out of the way.

James and I (and by "James and I" I mean "James") ordered something like 5 cubic yards of dirt and it's being delivered tomorrow. Then I am going to put new dirt in all around my house and hopefully this will make my plants happy. and prevent our basement getting flooded! also, i am going to build two more planters. and take some pictures. and eat my strawberries, if i can beat emma to them.

Amazon is being kind of mean to me. When I visit the main page, there's a little box that says "You know you want it," with a book from my wish list. Yes! I want it! You know I want it because I put it on my wishlist! Don't be a jerk, Amazon. Don't tease me. I'll buy that book when I'm good and ready, or maybe not at all if I can convince one of my co-workers to order it for the library. heh.

Last night I actually unpacked some boxes and I found the last of my missing DVDs so James and I were finally able to watch the episode from Season 7 of Buffy which I have been talking about for 3 weeks. Almost all the boxes from our office are gone, and we discovered that there is actually a bunch of room in there. Room! For stuff! Like a chaise longue! (Note: Apparently using the actual French term for something is so pretentious that blogger thinks it's a spelling error. Normally I try to avoid this type of pretension, which is why James and I regularly refer to our garage as a "car hole." However, I take exception to "chaise lounge." "Longue" means "long," and has nothing to do with lounging. Stupid language. Or, longuage. Again I say: heh.)

Also over the weekend James and I built the first of our magnificent raised beds for our garden. I'm really, really excited about it and I can't wait to build the other two. I planted a bunch of things, including some veggies and some perennials--some of them FROM THE FARMER'S MARKET! I'm pursuing both rain barrels and compost bins. I'm considering making my own organic fertilizer. I'm trying to prevent my dog from eating chives, since they are DOG POISON! The only thing I didn't get into the ground is my raspberries--I'm not sure if the canes have survived about a month living in a garbage pail in my living room. Hmm. Perhaps I am not the awesome gardener/homeowner type I appear to be. Opposite of heh: sad face.

Long time, no blog

This is what my balcony garden looks like these days. The sugar snap peas are my favourite; I love their little windy fingers. My one ambition these days is to be more like a sugar snap pea. I'll grow on whatever I can grab.


My amazing technicolour pepper! I grew this FROM NOTHING.


This is what the world looks like from up here. The strange sky, which looks like it was drawn with microsoft paint, and the apartments across the street hold equal interest for me.

more pretentious, please!

On How About Orange I saw this neat little tool: museumr. It creates a fake museum scene with one of your flickr photos in the background. This young couple is falling in love in front of my pathetic balcony garden, for example. (Note: This is an old photo. These days my balcony garden is robust and bloom-y. The sugar snap peas have little white blossoms! There are tiny, tiny green tomatoes!) Anyway, this tool has very limited usefulness, mainly you can use it to create images such as this one and post them on your blog. If you don't have a blog, well, then I don't know what you are supposed to do. Write down your inane thoughts in a notebook perhaps. Send postcards to your loved ones, and mail them with the correct postage.

I don't know about you, Internet, but I am about ready for it to be the weekend now. Like: What am I doing here? Why is it sooooo cold? Why doesn't someone put something in my mail box so I can amuse myself by reading it? Where are all my co-workers? Would anyone notice if I took another coffee break?