Salvation Amy

Those wacky kids over at google are celebrating Bloomsday right! Since it’s probably only for today, Look what they’ve done to my logo, Ma

Ananaia is, apparently, Indianapolis’ famous go-to guru on the subject of ancient deities.

Well said. I particularly like the line "These are indeed strange times when a tough old Army veteran finds common ground with a Wiccan and shaman healer…" Heh. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, Mama.

And doesn’t she sound like a wise, mountain-toppy kind of philosophizer chick in that quote? Or, if you rearrange the words, a little, Yoda? She is, in real life, one of the most down to earth people you will ever meet. And amazing in the way that she pursues both spiritual enlightenment and home repair in exactly the same moment and exactly the same way until the two are completely merged and indistinguishable. She walks the walk. And I’m feeling a little guilty about poking fun at the quote, except that I’m a little irritated that more of the interview with her wasn’t included.

And, yeah, the zealot with the stone arms buried in his yard? Uh, not very aligned really says it all. Sad sad sad. And weird. And macabre. And, well, creepy. See? This is why newspaper reporters never contact me for pithy quotes.

I am pretty sure that many many of the bugs are deadly to my plants, given the big bugshaped tooth marks, and, well, the half chomped rue leaf that I plucked several very attractive caterpillars from.

I should have paid attention in high school. I really had, I think, the opportunity to learn biology from one of the foremost naturalists in the world. She was lovely. And she will be getting a journal entry soon. So here, I just mention her in passing. I know we took some time on the structure and lives of plants. As that did not involve raging hormones, or teen angst, and actually required work, I learned what I needed for the tests (and sometimes not even that), and slid through.

So now, I am in this incredible place. It’s sort of as if all the plants of the world took a break from photosynthesis to say “Since we didn’t get your attention in the textbooks, we’ll try to get it now.”

They are amazing. I started gardening out of a sheepish realization that, for all the pain in my heart over injustice on the planet, all I was contributing to its betterment was my own pain. As my therapist says, I barely have a feeling before I have feelings about my feeling, and an online quiz measuring my ecological footprint on the earth left me with shame to spare. Around that same time, I started reading Lisa regularly, and she writes about producing your own food in such a way that to do so seems entirely natural and completely revolutionary.

And so I began. Bought some plants and some seeds, and BAM! threw them in the ground. Boom. For a while it was incredibly fast paced, believe it or not. The lettuce sprouted within days, and little pea seeds took root and started shooting out tendrils all over the place.

What I didn’t know, didn’t expect, was the thrill of watching how they all work.

Lettuce takes off, and asks nothing more from you than some water. You can thin it and then eat it, and nothing gets thrown away.

Peppers and tomatoes grow flowers. I got quite excited at the first ones. Then the flowers fell off, and I didn’t notice much happening, and thought, “Well, shoot. These aren’t going to work.” And then I woke up to a virtual plethora of peppers and sweet cherry and grape tomatoes.

When the strawberry flowers came, I knew that strawberries wouldn’t be far behind, and I know now that the yellow center of the flower will ripen into fruit. Some of the plants are shooting off daughters, and I know that those will take root and become new plants. Our strawberry bed is here to stay.

But the most amazing one of all, I think, is the pea plant. And I have a plethora of pea plants. They grow these flowers that are kind of orchidy, like a mouth, with a little bottom jaw. And then the pea grows in the middle. And I’ve been ranting and going “When are these flowers going to fall off so the peas can start?” and they don’t, and they don’t. And then one day, Bam! I noticed that they’ve been right there where I was looking and not looking at the same time.

My garden is like a place where I can go and constantly find presents I was not expecting. Who doesn’t like presents they weren’t expecting?

Every once in a while, I remember to wend my way over to see what the good folks at Landover Baptist are up to. They never disappoint.

Here’s a trailer for the upcoming sequel to The Passion of the Christ: The Payback of the Christ (featuring Ann Coulter as one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse…)

I don’t know if you’ve caught the news lately, but apparently former President Ronald Reagan is still dead. Honestly. They don’t seem to expect the situation to change. Ever. Oh, yeah. Also, Ray Charles died. Guess which one made me sadder.

Someone from the Nevada State Government got here searching for “Belly buttons.”

You’d think in the home of legalized prostitution, they’d get enough belly buttons. Perhaps it is some government research study.

Overnight, my garden has gone NUTS. There are flowers on the strawberries, the beginnings of flowers on the peas have become a full fledged plethora of flowery peas. I have FOUR little jingle bell peppers. I have one red bell pepper. There are flowers on the tomatoes. There is lettuce lettuce lettuce, and I planted some spinach which we’ll just have to see about… It may be a little warm for that. I can’t even begin to figure out how to thin the root vegetables, but I’d better, soon. And Scott is happy because, BOY are there ever a ton of little cayenne peppers.

We will use those to punish the children with. MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

OH! And a banana pepper.

There were also caterpillars on my rue. One of them was completely fat at the top and skinny at the bottom, I think from the MUNCHING ON MY PLANTS. I picked them off but am quite sure they will return. Charlie took one and put it in his bug box with a sprig of rue, and the intent to take him to school as a gift for the girl that he likes. Luckily, she likes bugs. There has never been a day that I’ve seen her that she hasn’t had some creature or another in her hand. Her mother once showed me her bug box, and said, “yeah. You know those tent caterpillars? The ones that take over a neigborhood and destroy all the trees? That’s what this is. My daughter raises them…”

Excellent Excellent piece from the NYT from a couple of days ago, about Abu Ghraib, pornography, accountability, and a little something called the First Amendment. I hate these entries where I’m all - “duh, go here, read this” but really, I have absolutely nothing to add to this.

I am so excited right now. Stuff is just popping out of the ground like, I don’t know. Something that pops. Popcorn. Or weasels, maybe. I have got lettuce lettuce lettuce. I’m a little bummed, because I got some more lettuce seeds a couple of weeks ago, and now I can’t find them, but they were on sale when I got them, so, I am hopeful I will be able to get some more.

The herbs are doing most excellent growing work, and the strawberries seem to be shooting off little daughters. The peas are, well, peaing. I staked them last night, a little late, and they are glad to have stakes, let me tell you.

I need to thin the heck out of all my root vegetables, except the onions, which, apparently, give off a smell if you thin them, and attract appropriately named oniony bugs. Whose name I can’t remember.

My morning glories, which were quite reluctant to begin with, have finally committed, and are growing round the mailbox.

Cutting up the branches of the cherry tree is going to require commitment on my part, and, little by little, I am getting the branches cut down. They are going to build a nice fence, around which I will grow blue/black and raspberries, and an experimental arbor, which will harbor grapes. It will be a grape harboring arbor. Within the fence will be flowers, because Maggie insists, and I’m looking at how I will do that. Soon there will be no grass at all, and we will have the most delicious yard in the neighborhood.

Nick is currently mocking me for bringing down the cherry tree, but he won’t be, when there is pie.

All roads lead to pie.