Tag Archives: tomatoes

May6

Gardening in an apartment – Spring, 2021

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Spring, 2021
Specifically, 19-Apr-2021


I enjoy gardening, and digging in the dirt.

I mean, think back on when kids are young… what kid doesn’t enjoy digging around in the dirt, not worrying about getting soil under their fingernails, and just having fun?

No reason to stop now that I’m an adult… right? Doubly-so, since cleaning up afterward just involves a quick shower, instead of (probably) a whole screaming fit, followed by a dunk in the bath?



I don’t have much space to dig around in the dirt at my current apartment… which, frustratingly, makes me want to garden and dig even more. I did quite a bit of gardening back in Portland, but it was usually subsumed by the work Sarah was doing, since she did a lot more flowers and garden arranging… my planting has always been quite utilitarian – I like peas, and sometimes tomatoes, with a few flowers thrown in for variance. I’m not great at designing and organizing a whole garden layout.

But you know what? That works perfectly for someone in an apartment, with a small balcony and a few pots for my plants.



There’s a small garden shop that I pass every day going to and from work – I stopped in for the first time, without much of a plan aside from “get the growing things”. I came out with a dozen little pea plants, some tomatoes, and an Azalea bush – a small one though, so don’t worry about me too much. I got a few planters, some soil, and… that’s really all I need, right? Probably?



That evening, I took a cool-down after dinner to garden again. I sat out on my balcony, under the nice incandescent lamps, and got my hands dirty. Soil and fertilizer strewn around me, big watering cans to water in the newly transplanted seedlings… I’m feeling good about this. I don’t know how well they’ll do – they get pretty good East-facing sun, but who knows how that’ll go – but in the mean time… I’m happy. I’m glad to have some growing things on my balcony again, and I can’t wait to see how they do.

Feb4

How to make a bad day… not so bad.

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14-Jan-15

 

I had a rough day.

In all honesty, I couldn’t pinpoint any single bit that made it worse than a normal day… I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess.  And then had the bed explode, and stab me with a knife made of doom.  It wasn’t pleasant.

The workday didn’t make it any better, especially when I had a last-minute project dropped on my lap, which kept me at work just long enough to have to bail on a date.  Seriously – one of my biggest frustrations is how everything is always timed just close enough that it reminds you how it could have been… instead of definitely being absolutely too late to keep my plans, instead I was only 15min late… so that little voice in the back of my head kept reminding me that, maybe, I could have made it.  That this other option was still just close enough that I could maybe rush and make it only a little late…

But no – Instead, I cut my losses, canceled plans, and drove home.

I knew how to make it a better night though – delicious dinners, with delicious drinks, and delicious relaxation.

 

An alternative title to this could be: “the night I practiced shucking oysters”

Because that is exactly what I did – I stopped in at the butchers shop to get a pair of steaks.  One for dinner, and one for lunch tomorrow.

Then, I salted them, and left them to sit while I walked down the street to whole foods, while listening to an amazing album.  At whole foods, bread and oysters (along with sauce, and an oyster knife) were bought.

Then I walked home… taking just long enough for the album to finish playing all the way through.

Oysters were shucked while the oven was heating up – then eaten while I was cooking the steak and cutting up the tomatoes to go with it.  The bread was tossed into the oven to warm up right before the steaks were ready, and it was done by the time they had sit and rested after being cooked.

Scotch, of course, was sipped liberally throughout the process.

 

By the time I was done eating?  Well, nothing had really changed in the real world.  But my outlook on it was markedly improved.