Thursday, February 23, 2023

satisfying my inner ship geek




i've been in copenhagen for a few wonderful days. i was working with some of the most creative people in denmark and i get to keep doing so! what more could a girl ask? a little walk along the quayside at nordhavn. i encountered this rather rusty barge and remembered all the beauty of rusty metal. in all, a very wonderful few days. 

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

i can't stop growing avocado plants

 

please ignore all the dirt at the base of these, the kitten has been busy.

like many people during corona, i became a little bit obsessed with one thing in particular. growing avocado plants. i was ordering gorgeous boxes of buttery avocados from freshland and after seeing a tiktok (naturally), i started saving the seeds and trying to get them to sprout. i remember trying as a child, with three toothpicks stuck into the seed, suspending the pit over a glass of water. i don't think it ever worked, but tiktok had a better way. 

you soak the pit for a couple of days in water, then peel off the brown outer skin. then you wrap it up in a damp paper towel, stick it in a ziploc bag and ignore it for a month or so. after about a month, it should have sprouted a little root like this one. and then it's time to suspend it over water.

i collected old milk bottles in thrift stores, as they work perfectly for this and you don't have to do the pit any violence with toothpicks. you just fill it as full as you can and make sure the tiny little root can touch the water. 

i had five pits that had sprouted (and yes, i might have an equal number that are still nestled in their damp paper towel), so i set them on the window sill in the kitchen to sprout. the root will grow a bit more and then a little nub of the tree will sprout out and its leaves will begin to unfold. 

once they're well-established and have really good roots (i neglected to photograph that part), they're ready to be potted. i had five from late last summer that we were ready to pot last weekend and it was warm enough out in the sunny greenhouse to spend a bit of time getting them potted up. 

i have quite a few bigger plants from the ones i did that first year of corona. they're thriving and all have lovely new leaves forming at the top, as they sense the light returning. they're on various window sills all over the house. they make a nice gift when you're invited to a birthday or just as a hostess gift. they're quite easygoing. i give mine a good watering once a week and they all seem to be thriving. in our climate, i don't ever expect to be able to plant them out (though who knows, with climate change), nor do i really expect that they'll ever produce avocados. someone told me on instagram that they wouldn't, but i'm not so sure. all i know is that it's a little obsession that i quite enjoy.

i even drew some and made avocado plant prints last weekend during our printmaking course. it just feels somehow magical, getting a whole live plant from the pit of an avocado that i ate on toast. 

Sunday, January 29, 2023

scenes from a weekend

what a weekend. one of my work besties was let go on friday. it was such a shock and i felt so badly for her that i didn't sleep that well on friday night. but it got better on saturday - i went with a friend to moesgaard museum, a sort of extension of the danish national museum, near aarhus. only it's much better. their exhibits present bog people and pottery shards and bits of gold and bronze dug up from the ground in a new light. literally - the exhibits are lit so well. it's actually quite dark in the museum and then well-placed light shines directly on the objects, highlighting them perfectly. we had lunch there as well, then went for a walk on a nearby beach.

this iron age bog man - grauballemanden - looks more well-lit than he actually is thanks to my phone's light compensation. he's really wonderfully displayed - in a circular room, with very subtle light, which feels quite like a sanctuary. you can sit on the bench and contemplate him. instead of feeling like some kind of exploitation of someone who has no choice in the matter, it feels like a reverent and respectful space. 

husband managed to find someone who was giving away a greenhouse if you were willing to take it down yourself, so we spent sunday morning dismantling our new greenhouse. it's one that had plastic panels, rather than glass, and they were extremely fragile and sun-damaged. but we're going to cover it in netting and use it for growing brassicas and hopefully keeping away those pesky caterpillars that eat up all the leaves in the late summer. 

the wind is rising outside and in the coming week, it will already be february. interesting to see what it brings. 

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

she's feeling 22!


the child is 22! she spent the day painting this painting for herself. she sent pictures of dinner with a big group of friends.  happy, beautiful, creative, smart, working and studying hard, thriving and surrounded by friends. we really couldn't ask for more. i miss her, but she's exactly where she needs to be. i'm so happy that she's living her best life. 

Sunday, January 08, 2023

a fox among the hens





i got a wildlife camera for christmas. i wanted to catch that jerk of a fox that ate three ducks and two roosters this autumn. i placed the camera outside our henhouse, where the chickens and the lone duck that remain are safely tucked behind a very secure door and fence during the day. it clearly doesn't keep him from strolling past to check on a nightly basis. we've set a trap for him and in the top picture, he's strolling nonchalantly past it. 

sunday breakfast


i found some breakfast sausages on discount - i'm always looking in the "mad spild" bin (that means food waste, but it really means not wasting food) and i decided to institute a new habit here in 2023 - we're going to do sunday breakfast! i made a dutch baby pancake over christmas and realized how easy it was, so i whipped one up this morning to go with the sausages (forgot to photograph them). great way to start the day! here's hoping it's the start of a 2023 habit.

Friday, January 06, 2023

going down in flames



the whole shitshow in the house right now, with the repuglicans' inability to elect a speaker, is like driving by an accident on the highway. you just can't help but slow down to watch the flames. and i have so many mixed feelings about it. i'll admit i'm mostly amused as i write this. though the utter dysfunction of one of the branches of the united states government isn't amusing at all. it does seem quite satisfying to see these clowns make fools of themselves. over and over again. where is the shame in these people?

i remember back when dan quayle was the vice president. that's when i began to be embarrassed for my country. little did i know that it would only go downhill from there. i thought he was really the lowest we could sink. a vice president who couldn't spell potato. oh, how we long for those innocent days. 

but honestly, these craven assholes are reaping what they sowed. at least biden and pelosi's house got a shit ton done over the past two years. nothing will get done now, if they're even able to seat the congress, it'll just be one long shitshow. but at least, it will likely make it very, very clear that no repuglican can be president in 2024 with this level of dysfunction.

while it's not the beginning of the end of the repuglican party (that started long ago and as you know, i blame reagan), it's surely the death throes. please let it be the death throes. let's hope they're going down in flames.