rebeccmeister | Recuperation; various updates

You know those periods where one's internal monologue is kind of quiet? Well. I still feel like I'm recovering from that tremendous burst of energy over a week ago, and as a result, my thoughts are a bit on the quiet side. S and I spent the weekend as we spend many weekends, riding our bicycles hither and yon in search of this, that, and the other thing. We went to the farmer's market Saturday morning, then rode up to Francis to see if they had any dresses that would be appropriate as bridesmaid dresses. The answer is, no, although we enjoyed getting to poke around for a few minutes.

Then we rode back to S's house for some lunch, then on down to a bike shop and the ceramics studio so I could glaze a few pieces. Then to REI, briefly, then home for dinner and a touch of gardening, then up to a shopping mall for more dress-shopping. Alas, no luck at the mall, either. I'm ready to call it quits on shopping in stores and to go with a custom-made dress by an Etsy dressmaker instead. I've got one picked out already.

On Sunday morning, I tried to do some work on the Jolly Roger's tires, one of which was badly in need of replacement. The rear wheel now has a brand-new tire, and I swapped the old rear tire to the front, to replace the worn-out front tire. We then trekked over to Sur la Table to buy some kitchen trinkets, and then it was time to check on the garden and do a bit of cooking for a lab party. Tiredness and a feeling of hurry-hurry-hurry made me peckish while cooking, but poor S did an admirable job putting up with it all.

I'm still feeling kind of worn out today, and am thinking perhaps high pollen counts on top of a busy errand-running weekend are the major contributors.

But in the meantime, you might be curious to know a thing or two about the garden. First off, one of the artichoke plants has begun to flower. Granted, they aren't as huge as the flowers on my advisors' artichokes, but they're flowers nonetheless. The broccoli has all gone to seed, and the cauliflower's following shortly after it. A few of the California poppies have produced their bright-orange flowers, and the nasturtium is looking a bit scraggly by now. Oh, the lettuce has completely bolted, although it hasn't started flowering yet.

And the tomatoes. Oh, the tomatoes. The Early Girl offered up five tomatoes this morning. They aren't huge, but they're lovely morsels. The remaining plants have fruit in set for the most part, which is good because temperatures will soon be too hot for the flowers. We ate the second half of the strawberry crop of the weekend (=1 berry). We transplanted the larger eggplant plants into larger pots on Saturday, but will want to build some wooden planter boxes for them fairly soon.

The squashes, well, have been a mixed bag, much as I expected. Two of the sugar pie pumpkin seedlings that I transplanted into the ground withered away and died. The seedling that I transplanted into a larger pot is growing, quickly. The zucchini plant is flowering, but is still small, and the fruit isn't setting. We shall see if I have any success at all.

And we're a bit concerned about the rhubarb plant, which appears to be withering away as well. I thought a lack of water might be the cause, but extra water didn't help.

And that's almost all for now.

The last news item is that I just found out that a big grant I applied for last fall got funded - hooray!