deborahjross: (Fall of Neskaya)
The days are still warm, but the nights and mornings are celebrating the change. It's been down in the low '50s overnight. I suspect the tomato crop is done for (and there are only so many things you can do with green tomatoes.) We'll extend the season by draping plastic "greenhouses" over them, but still.

The news has not reached the summer squash or pole beans or cucumbers. I'm now in that insane stage of harvest/preservation between summer vegetables and the onset of the Deluge of Pears. Apples, thank goodness, won't be ready for a bit. Dave is threatening to dig up the rest of the potato crop, but they'll keep in a cool place for a while and don't take up the same place on the dinner plate as squash or beans.

We just sold the wine cave and now have enough money for an upright freezer. The old chest freezer is about full, which means (a) ack! where do I put more frozen food? and (b) it's incredibly awkward to try to find something on the bottom, not to mention (c) it hasn't been defrosted in a couple of years...the new one must be self-defrosting.

In between this, I'm on first round editorial revisions (on the 2nd out of 3 books) for The Seven-Petaled Shield. This is the second go-through, changes having been done but many typos introduced. Each book is running around 150K, so it takes a while to go through with full attention.

I've seen the cover art for The Children of Kings. Oh my. Heart goes pitter-pat. It's gorgeous. On the trail leading to Shainsa in the Dry Towns, complete with moons overhead and recalcitrant oudrakhi. By Matt Stawicki, who did the covers for [livejournal.com profile] sartorias's Inda books. Book is scheduled for March 2013.

Next chapter of Jaydium is up on my blog (for previous chapters and links, click "Read A Story")
deborahjross: (Default)


It's our first successful crop, planted last winter. The poor plants huddled there in the cold and gloom, looking as if they were never going to do anything. Then spring couldn't make up its mind, but finally went away. And we have explosions of cauliflowers! These are "cheddar," a beautiful color. I don't know if it's the variety or the freshness, but the one I cooked last night (with just a sprinkling of cheese) was so mild and delicious, it was almost sweet.

After dinner, as is my wont on Mondays, I went off to a meeting, leaving Dave to do the dishes. So the cauliflower dish did not get cleared from the table immediately. Cleo, our matriarch kitty (she's sitting on my shoulder in the icon), has long been known as a broccoli thief. Apparently, cauliflower is close enough to be tempting, because Dave relates that he heard wild yowling from the dining room. Cleo had pulled the cauliflower on to the floor and was in the process of defending it from Oka, our German Shepherd Dog (who weighs 95 lbs to her 5 lbs).

Ferocious little beastie, she is. Either that, or the the cauliflower was growing close enough to the catnip to have absorbed whatever creates kitty-endorphins.

[livejournal.com profile] sartorias, we'll be harvesting all week, so will save some for you!
deborahjross: (Default)
I'm not much of a gardener. I once kept some African violets alive for several years by ignoring them except for moments of panic. It's not the recommended treatment, but they seemed to like it. So much of the actual gardening around here falls to Dave. It's his decompression and meditation, plus the occasion for a bit of obsessive knowledge-gathering now and again.

The asparagus has been naturalizing, escaping its nice neat bed and seeding through the lavender patch in one direction and the clover in another. We've long given up any hope of containing the arugula: it's a weed. Ditto purslane. Ditto... I don't know what all else. We regularly have lettuces pop up in odd places and as for parsnips -- Dave decided to plant them in the back alley (communal property but the neighbors don't care if we cultivate it) which is very, very hard-packed. Several years of letting them go to seed later and we have a thousand parsnip plants. We did eventually get rid of the tomatillos, at least I think they're gone. You need 2 plants to make babies and they produce way too many for just the two of us. We gave away dozens of seedlings a couple of years back. A handful of carrots got away from us, meaning we didn't harvest them while they were still tender, so we let them go. now they're 3 feet tall and about to make a gazillion carrot seeds. This bodes well for next spring. That old chard plant over by the grapefruit tree is still alive after 4 years, although so bedraggled I don't have the heart so snip off its few healthy leaves. And the rhubarb got happy and robust this spring, promising a good crop next year.

After some under-the-house proofing, we've settled down to a mutually agreeable relationship with skunks. It turns out that not only do they not wreak great havoc on garden plants but they happily snarf up all the bugs and grubs and things you don't want. We haven't seen gophers for about 4 years, and believe that the skunk-friendly habitat has something to do with it. The one rule is Never Let The Dog Out At Dusk. Ever. No matter what he tells you.

Our garden is also a-buzzing with bees. More honeybees and fewer native bees this year, but all of them in ecstasy over the clover, the lavender, the borage, the blackberry flowers. We planted bee-balm and it should bloom soon. As a consequence of some or all of these measures, our garden is also teeming with lady-bugs (many of them in pairs in, er, compromising positions, promising even more next season or whenever they next hatch). They're after the aphids which are after the... you get the picture.

We're all connected, aphids and lavender and skunks. And spiders and garter snakes and screech owls (wonderful sound at night) and the nest of stellar's jays on top of the ladder leaning against the house.
deborahjross: (piano)
The second round spring salad did not contain baby arugula. Nature had other ideas. Dave found 4 wee fennel bulbs, so I chopped one up with the rest of the miner's lettuce and fresh orange sections. Dressed with raspberry vinaigrette. Amazing.

I just passed the 6 year mark of piano study. Here's what I'm working on:

Clementi Sonatina Op. 36, No. 1 (I think it's obligatory at a certain stage, but I'm having fun with it)
Chopin Prelude Op. 28, No 4 (e minor)
Exercises from Hanon and Czerny (the Czerny is kind of fun, if maniacal)
Brahms Waltz (A flat)
Vangelis Hymne

plus repertoire pieces, which vary with mood, time, memorization (meaning that if I have a chance to sit down at a strange piano, I'll run through everything I can play without music)

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deborahjross: (Default)
Deborah J. Ross

November 2020

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