The Weekend of Gardening and Eccentrics
Jun. 5th, 2005 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaThis weekend, due to unseen broke-ness (thank you again, National City, you cock investigators), found Our Hero, Mr. Pegritz--that is, me--stuck in Uniontown. Now, this could've been a disaster of boredom, but thanks to the weather and a Ben Franklin borrowed from my mother*, I got to spend my time puttering about in my garden by day (or, rather, by evening, since I loathe going out in bright sunlight) and watching movies by night. Also, since my old friend Amy has moved back into town, I spent a good bit of time hanging out at her place getting reacquainted and goofing around with her now-four-year-old son Brandon. Amy's pretty damned awesome, and I didn't know how much I'd missed having her around until I hadn't seen her for, like, five years. But we've known each other for so goddamned long (since 1992, at least), it only takes about thirteen seconds for us to get back to hanging out and busting on each other as usual. Plus, damn can that girl cook....I've never eaten a better piece of cheesecake.
Anyway, back to gardening. Thanks to the buttfilleting curse of fibromyalgia, I can't exactly do a lot of digging and scraping in the ground as I am otherwise wont to do. So, I've just been working with pots or containors, and one small bed in the corner of my yard. It's a nice northwestern location, and as such gets sun throughout most of the day save the early morning hours when the light is blocked by the house. Nonetheless, this makes it a decent location for plants that like a good bit of sun and plants that don't: there are some convenient pine trees that shade certain areas. Anyway, at last count, here are the plants I've established in my plot:
California poppies (from seed; they're just germinating now)
Crownvetch (in CAREFULLY CONTROLLED breaks: I have to weedwhack it every five days or it will eat everything)
Lisianthus
Balloon flowers (platycodon varieties)
I'm obviously planning for more, and have many more seeds for ornamental vines that I need to get started this week. I've also started some White Snow alyssum and plain ol' blue fuzzy ageratum in hanging baskets; I will need to thin them out into more baskets, soon.
As far as vegetables go...I've got bell peppers and tomato plants that still need to be potted, and my mother just brought back a ton of various herb plants from a friend's. Today I potted some catnip that I'd started from seed a few weeks ago. While I was doing so, the outdoor cats, Little Black and Gross, just kept tracking down the catnip and gnawing on it until finally I had to put it in the cellarway and close the door to keep the little hellions from it. Christ, I must have the China White version of catnip here, because even when the plants were sealed up under a heavy wood door the crackheads were rolling and purring on the door! I now have the plants inside, where Christy has yet to notice them....She doesn't care too much for fresh catnip, preferring a dried, aged blend of greater sophistication and a more mellow high.
Gardening aside, I also watched The Aviator and Kinsey, two films I've been wanting to see for a while. Howard Hughes is my new hero. I greatly respect any complete wacko who can nonetheless Get Things Done and make a mint doing it. And who can also poke Ava Gardner and Katherine Hepburn...two of my idols from the Silver Age of Hollywood. Alfred Kinsey was also a great inspiration. The fact that a repressed, bug-obsessed biology professor could end up getting so much mad poon gives me a great deal of inspiration! The astonishing backwardness of sexuality in the early part of the 20th Century just boggles my mind, but apparently the Roaring Twenties just didn't hit everywhere. I'm tempted to make my mother watch the film, too, so she can squirm and twitch every time she sees a wang. Great films, and I highly recommend them to anyone with an interest in eccentric, brilliant people.
I also went to Ohiopyle for a while yesterday, but I'll detail my adventures there on Pegritz.com later on. So, stay tuned!
Anyway, back to gardening. Thanks to the buttfilleting curse of fibromyalgia, I can't exactly do a lot of digging and scraping in the ground as I am otherwise wont to do. So, I've just been working with pots or containors, and one small bed in the corner of my yard. It's a nice northwestern location, and as such gets sun throughout most of the day save the early morning hours when the light is blocked by the house. Nonetheless, this makes it a decent location for plants that like a good bit of sun and plants that don't: there are some convenient pine trees that shade certain areas. Anyway, at last count, here are the plants I've established in my plot:
California poppies (from seed; they're just germinating now)
Crownvetch (in CAREFULLY CONTROLLED breaks: I have to weedwhack it every five days or it will eat everything)
Lisianthus
Balloon flowers (platycodon varieties)
I'm obviously planning for more, and have many more seeds for ornamental vines that I need to get started this week. I've also started some White Snow alyssum and plain ol' blue fuzzy ageratum in hanging baskets; I will need to thin them out into more baskets, soon.
As far as vegetables go...I've got bell peppers and tomato plants that still need to be potted, and my mother just brought back a ton of various herb plants from a friend's. Today I potted some catnip that I'd started from seed a few weeks ago. While I was doing so, the outdoor cats, Little Black and Gross, just kept tracking down the catnip and gnawing on it until finally I had to put it in the cellarway and close the door to keep the little hellions from it. Christ, I must have the China White version of catnip here, because even when the plants were sealed up under a heavy wood door the crackheads were rolling and purring on the door! I now have the plants inside, where Christy has yet to notice them....She doesn't care too much for fresh catnip, preferring a dried, aged blend of greater sophistication and a more mellow high.
Gardening aside, I also watched The Aviator and Kinsey, two films I've been wanting to see for a while. Howard Hughes is my new hero. I greatly respect any complete wacko who can nonetheless Get Things Done and make a mint doing it. And who can also poke Ava Gardner and Katherine Hepburn...two of my idols from the Silver Age of Hollywood. Alfred Kinsey was also a great inspiration. The fact that a repressed, bug-obsessed biology professor could end up getting so much mad poon gives me a great deal of inspiration! The astonishing backwardness of sexuality in the early part of the 20th Century just boggles my mind, but apparently the Roaring Twenties just didn't hit everywhere. I'm tempted to make my mother watch the film, too, so she can squirm and twitch every time she sees a wang. Great films, and I highly recommend them to anyone with an interest in eccentric, brilliant people.
I also went to Ohiopyle for a while yesterday, but I'll detail my adventures there on Pegritz.com later on. So, stay tuned!
