Update

Garden

I pulled the lettuce and the spinach. Both have gone to seed. The cilantro looks like it is about to go to seed as well. I'll replant more lettuce although it is a bit of an exercise in futility unless we are vigilant on eating baby greens. I think it's just going to be too warm this summer to keep us in leaf lettuce for long. The cilantro...I expected. I really need to try to start it from seed as it gets too pricey to buy so much from plant. I'm going to see if I can get at least one plant to go to seed so I can collect the seeds and have a nice stash of coriander for the winter. I have no idea what I'm doing to collect them. :/

My efforts in starting anything but leaf lettuce and radishes from seed are failing miserably. No summer spinach has come up and no chard. I'm thinking about just buying plants for the rest of the season and into the fall and just try to learn about growing this year. The ultimate goal, of course, is to go from seed-to-seed and not to collect my own seeds from my own garden year after year. Trying it this year is feeling a little too ambitious.

Since I'm so nervous about starting from seed for my winter garden, I guess it make sense to buy plant for the winter garden. Fortunately I found a non-profit that will sell me a number of plants for $25 for the fall/winter. It feels cheaper than going to Swanson's.

I'm thinking about taking a winter gardening class from Seattle Tilth. I feel totally not confident in building a a frame for them and caring for them. Spring and summer is easy. Maybe winter is just as easy. I don't know. I'd rather have some guidance to build my self-confidence.

Anyway, that zucchini I grew from seeds? Killed them from lack of water. Same with the eggplant :( This is probably one year that both of them would thrive. All might not be totally lost. I'll go back to Swanson's this weekend to see if there are any to pick up. I really should have kept that regular zucch. plant I gave to my neighbor. Although it would also probably be RIP right now too.

I'm going to pick up more chard and I'm debating on picking up kale and poc choi. My kale hasn't sprung to life either, and I'm depending on that and poc choi to get me through the winter. :/

Baking

Speaking of neglect, I completely forgot to feed Beatrice for a few days while I was lost in sleep deprivation. She smells kinda fruity and that ain't right. She's not looking very active either. I fed her tonight and will feed her tomorrow morning before I put her to work. I'm going to try a basic country white loaf boule on Saturday. Well, techinically I'll start after work tomorrow to get a loaf by Saturday eve. We'll see. I may have murdered her too.

It isn't the end of the world. I'll be disappointed as I've used almost 30 pounds of flour to nurture the little bitch, but really, whose fault is it for wanting to be the snotty purist?!? Certainly not the little yeasties. If she's dead, I'll try a Reinheart recipe that uses a lot LESS flour and a lot less time to get going. A mother is a mother is a mother and I once I have a viable one, I can still use the recipies from Silverstein.

Speaking of baking, I was on the shuttle to go to the university this morning and we stopped right in front of a bakery on Eastlake and had to wait for the bridget. I could see the bakers handling and rolling out dough and I simply swooned.

I know, I know. I'm romanticizing the life of getting up at an ungodly hour and working my fingers to the bone. And quite frankly, I'm disinterested in everything except bread. (Although, if you think about it, a pastry chef that doesn't like sweets means that she'll never weigh 300 lbs). I intellectually know that it isn't a charmed life and not very easy to make a living.

But oh, to make something with my hands. To have at the end of the day something tangible that I can point to and say, "I created this!". That is heaven to me. If I could work with AwesomeHusband, I'd work in the studio in a heartbeat--just as a worker bee. I'd probably be stuck doing the books or something, but really I just want to get my hands on the medium.

Art

An ambitious project that will most likely never come to fruition is burning a hole in my head. I don't have enough actual material to shoot yet, but I have a burning drive to do a series of still life that feel more like Rembrandt paintings. It's all about the lighting, of which I am totally ignorant. of course, it'll have some Photoshopping. My camera actually demands it. D70s are built not to have the proper colors straight out of the box unless you add custom tone curves into the camera itself. I'd prefer to keep it to a minimum and try to reproduce it as much as possible with light.

The other is my own desire to print things myself on different mediums. I want to do a number of pieces on a glass medium. It's the perfect blend of my stuff and what I can get from the studio. But I've figured out a little ingenious way of making a slide show in glass. I don't have all the mechanics thought out yet, but it's perfect in my head.

I'd love a way to combine them both, but I can't quite see how to mesh them. They don't really fit right now.

Of course, it'll be years and years before I get it down. There are so many variables that I have in my head that I don't know how to do actually do and do well that it's just a constant burning and needing to purge.

I'm feeling inspired to work on the China photos again. There is so much dust and crap on each shot of the Li River that I've just kinda been demoralized every time I've wanted to start. I've unlocked a number of other photos (although I notice that most of my wedding photos that I scanned are still locked) on my flickr account.

It's here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jojo_beanhead/

if anyone is interested. I think I mostly unlocked my New Orleans photos and old photos of my neice. I actually love the shots of her. I really need to photograph her more often while she is such a little girl. Not only is she absolutely breathtaking, but in a few years she won't let me. I love the shots I got at her first birthday. They are typical snapshots, but she is just so Ceecee in them. I captured her right before she was on a too-much-attention-sugar-meltdown that I absolutely love. You can tell that she is about half-a-second away form just losing her s***. It isn't a stunning work on it's own, it's just the joy of being able to document that second right before the Great Meltdown.

I wish I was a better photographer. I'd love to be able to shoot my sister-in-law's pregnancy. Now that she is entering her 3rd trimester and all round, I would love to be able to capture her. She doesn't really realize how absolutely beautiful she is and I want so badly to show her how sensual and alive and stunning she is right now.

She is always stunning and composed and carries herself in a way that makes me almost jealous (except I'm too busy watching her be so graceful that I can't muster jealousy or envy until I leave her company). I want so much to show her what she looks like outside herself. I have a feeling that she doesn't have the slightest clue. I wish I was astute enough to really capture it for her and give her a mirror.