pira

TODAY...no dolly piccies.

We have for your viewing pleausure: images of parrot tulips, in all their twisted glory :3

These guys really presented a problem, because they have a natural, waxy surface that reflects light in an odd fashion or appears grey before they completely unfurled...so I had to wait a day and go back when they'd opened u a bit more.

While I genuinely find pleasure in the streamlined angles of a regular tulip, after a while they all look the same. On the other hand, the parrot variety presents an endless parade of contours and shadows in which not only do the colour break but the petals do as well, feathering and curling in individually unique directions ~ they are rather like the anti-tulip tulip >D


( parrot tulipspam )

Got a good haul out of the attic yesterday ~ no finishes but have 6 garbage bags filled and many boxes crammed with items to donate. Also removed an area rug that I'm just going to dump. I love that rug but there is no getting rid of the cat pee smell so out it goes after hording it for a year. I also cleaned out 3 kitchen cupboards of items I don't use or haven't in years. That is a very good feeling :)

Today it's depressingly overcast and raining, so we can't continue in the attic again until the sun comes out as there is but one lightbulb up there and the area we need to attack next is far away from the electrical light source but...is near a window. Hopefully this afternoon ...tomorrow my parents come for a visit so that rules out anything getting done unless we get to early in the morning.

And last but not least ~ here's a few shots from this weeks' vase of tulips. They were a very unusual bunch, flopping and actually crumpled in places. The colour has oddly faded to *meh* as the petals pushed unfurled which has been a great disappointment....but here a few before that point.


( Pink Tulip-spam )

I present you with some of what you used to expect from me ~ FLORAL PORTRAITS!

I'm being kind to your journals and using a lj-cut AND just a pale little bud. Click below for some retina burning orange XD

T.G.I.F and all that folks! It's a fullmoon so keep your powder dry and your wits about you ...and above all, no matter what happens just count to ten and let it slide. ;)


( TULIP SPAM )

So issue of Forbidden Fruit zine launched and I am sitting back awaiting the continued chirping of crickets. If you missed the artwork in a format larger than a bookplate, check my previous post.

I did a run around with the eldest yesterday ~ picking ups bedding and such for her dormroom. She leaves to attend uni soon ~ and that just feels weird. It's not weird that she's leaving home...because she really isn't doing that yet. The school is walking distance from the house, BUT we felt it important that the emmerse herself in the experience of having to room with a stranger so out the door she is shoved.

I am looking forward to a school year that doesn't involve the daily father/daughter confrontations about the boyfriend.

Today I'm playing at some parging and... *groans*...I can't really put it off any longer...I need to deal with the fugly gardens. I have prefered to sit at the pc, listening to episodes of THIS AMERICAN LIFE and ripping seams.... telling myself that I'm being productive, but there is only so much ignoring of the yard a person can do and I need to suck it up and just DEAL with it before the stuff out there grows so wild it eats a small child

Speaking of things that grow... here is the second batch of sunny florals :)

( More sunflower spammage )

It's that time of year again when going to the market means fresh cut, locally grown sunflowers by the armful *^__^*

Yellow ones are okay, but personally I prefer the deep burgundy ones (Velvet Queen) or the brown-tinged Autumn Beauty ~ which I spied behind the table at the farmers market yesterday.

Teh Bob looked at the brown streaked blossoms and remarked that he'd never have thought to buy those...he prefers them brighter.

Mr. blue carnations and green roses has a dubious eye for colour when he's not being typically pedestrian in his choices, IMHO....

ANYway ~ I took the opportunity to play with them in the later afternoon with the camera, and must have been entertaining to watch as I lay on my back on the hard deck, squirming around a vase as sunflowers above my head rained pollen into my eyes and camera lens. >__<

So here we are...Helianthus annum spam:

( Sun sun sun here they come!!!! )

Today it is 13C (55 F) with periods of sun and sprinkles of rain all mixed up with a light breeze.....and I am feeling FINE!

It's June, but we are finally getting MY kinda spring (not to be confused with the climatic spin-the-bottle Mother Nature has been playing February ~ May this year)....*just loving breathing in that fresh, clean air instead of the lung-clogging smog of last week*

The heat-rats are in a funk, but I am tickled by the mild temperatures that mean I can sleep with the windows open and the A/C off. :)

I finished book 3 of The Immortals ~ ordered the concluding 4th, because I ...okay...I admit... I'm addicted. :P

Left hanging 'till that volume arrives, I continued on with House Lust and tried to put my finger on what it is about this particular book that is bothering me ~ and it's probably the fact that it's too easy to read.

...okay that sounds silly, considering I've read 3 Tamora Pierce novels in a week but hey...I do expect a bit more substance from my nonficion. The book is just a tad too *chatty* , although that does make it easy to graze on ...and that IS all you really do, graze. Unlike Michael Pollen's tomes, where the reader is actually forced to digest the information (after all...he is a thinker-author), Daniel McGinn merely spews opinions and observations like a talk show host (a.k.a. reporter-author) ~ Hmmm is that the difference between a writer for the NewYork Times and one for Newsweek? *@__@!!?

Anyway ~ as I was lying abed reading about *the cult of HGTV* and it's minions (which is most of the American Middle Class it would seem) I catch myself thinking that ....I am so not surprised. It's like having a great big secret revealed to you, except you have known about the insanity (and mocked it to everyone that would stand still long enough to hear you) for well over a decade, and have been fighting an uphill battle against The-keeping-up-with-the-Jones, for longer than that. The weird thing is that I don't know if I am enjoying reading this book that basically tells me that I've been right all along about a whole LOT of things.

I don't need to be vindicated on stuff that just strikes me as common sense. Maybe my discomfort is born from the fact that I just don't get the way these people think (and by these people, I mean the ones in the book and those in my real life that have similar aspirations)...it makes me really uncomfortable. I just don't know what to say to them any more than those who are habitual namedroppers. I draw a complete blank 0__0 ~ it's as though I am reading about pod-people...very crazy pod-people I might add.

Not that I've never been struck by the silly-stick ~ heck knows my hobbys are hardly more realistic, but at least they aren't causing the world economy to flatline....

On that note...howza about that rain?



( Read more... )

Twas up at 5:30 and at the farmers market by 6:30 a.m. ~ and had to wait for the first batch of apple fritters AND Jamaican patties to bake/fry, so I knocked back an espresso and while Teh Bob picked up the cut-meats I chose my weekly cut-flowers.

Yes, he buys me flowers once a week...but given the chance I'll pick my own eye-candy thank-you-very-much, because bless his colour-blind but romantic heart ~ he doesn't have ANY taste when it comes to flora and no matter how many times I tell him, blue carnations and green daisies are just not normal >D

ANYway, when we got home the sun peeked out and I dumped our purchases on the kitchen counter and grabbed my camera to play a bit before I lost the light to more rain clouds. :) You will find behind the cut like usual.

I have a heap of things to get at today, but mostly I have to deal with the rest of those Japan photos on my hard drive. I need to sort them, shop n crop the fellow traveller ones and then burn them all off and mail them out by next week. That is the plan...at least in theory. I have the discs and the bubble envelops so it's just a matter of getting my butt in gear.

Once that is done my brain won't have any further excuses to distract me from *needful domestic duties* that I am literally tripping over. Of course doing the pc work hinges on no thunderstorms and having to turn off and unplug the machine....better get cracking.

*looks at photos...makes list....counts....stops after 200...whimpers*

Holy crap. This is not going to be done in a day!!

*salutes * And on that note...later-gators!

( Garden pic-spam )

No...really.

As I concluded last year....the Amaryllis is one flirty bit of flora and I just love watching the smexiness unfold as it first noses it's way out of the bulb and then after a good long stretch gets down to the business of the big tease as it slowly opens up and yawns wide to display all it's glory.

This mornings' bitto sunshine allowed me to capture a few images in natural light. I wasn't sure we'd even get sun and I'd lose the chance entirely since the plant had stopped contemplating the zen of blooming and decided this morning getting on with the job. I had wanted to capture the *smirk* n the bud's lips (Little Shoppe of Horrors anyone), but couldn't get home in time from errands to do so. 1 1/2 hours this morning was enough time for three petals to pull back from the bud and the sly mouth was gone....well at least that particular expression is. She's still looking as though she has something to say.....


I wonder if I should name her Audrey?


( FEED ME )

It's winter therefore it's intensely-coloured-close-ups-of-flowers-in-a-vase time!

For all the HE-MAN-uber-Jockisms that generally definition Teh Bob, he is a closet romantic ~ as such, when he goes to the market on Saturday I tend to get spoiled with flowers (along with apple fritters and a chai latte) ~ and the fun thing about the Farmers' market flowers is that they are actually the culls that florists leave behind ...meaning they are cheap, plentiful and gloriously mishapen.

Bob knows I have a weakness for twisted Gerberas....hence the gerberamaspamdam below.

In other news I'm halfway through book 3 for the year. I've decided that every day I will simply seat myself in the livingroom for an hour and just have at it ~ period. This book is ON the list (February), so having gotten pleasantly ahead of myself, I can proceed to concentrate on the non-list, non-fiction book about the history of Kimono in February. I've decided this thing really needs to read that before the Kyoto trip, as it will supply me with a knowledge-base to draw upon with other members of the small tour group...in that ~ I will have some clue what they are talking about.

Giving myself a month to casually read the Kimono N/F will then allow me to turn my attention to those book-bags I'm making for the party in 2 weeks time....*nods to self*...the thinking is that it's good to be a bit a head of the game for when life gets bogged down domestically....and it does indeed tend to do that out of the blue ~ hence having to always be a few steps ahead of whatever has my ass in it's sights.

Teh Bob informed me that Teh Sprog is going to be signed up for soccer this spring/summer. Seeing the hair rise on my neck he quickly told me not to worry and that he'd take him to the games and practices (twice a week). I pointed out that he was usually busy and that the soccer ball tended to fall into my lap and had done so for YEARS! He defended himself by saying he'd take him some of the time and besides, I have books so what's the problem? (.__(. Couldn't really argue with that....especially considering the backlog of manga/GNs on the shelf.

Anyway ...onto the flora

( Gerber pic spam )

Sometimes I am left to wonder if my attention span has been reduced to that of a puppy by having children or is it just a reflection of my particular domestic circumstances that has me ratchetting about like a ping pong ball from place to place or room to room.

Either way...I'm oddly busy for someone who essentially has a very basic routine and simple life.

I read one article in the newspaper, move onto 3 pages of a manga, then to a paragraph in a magazine, back to a few more pages in a manga, graze the subject lines of journal entries, back to the newspaper....Of course I'm sort of multi-tasking while I do all this,but I swear to the Gods that I am totally and utterly unable to keep my eye on the ball for more than a minute when given the opportunity to read quietly for a longer span of time. I have become so attuned to being interupted all the time, that actually reading ANYTHING for more than a few minutes is almost impossible to accomplish. I'm like a hummingbird faced with an entire garden in bloom and having to sample every blossom in the place...always moving...but in my case it's jumping from one printed thing to another. SURE I can keep them straight, but it would be more efficient to actually finish one before starting another.

Of course I'm not exactly in the same place long enough to do that....the longest I spend reading in one spot is the 20 minutes on the exercise bike at the gym every other day...

Anyway, today le sprog was home with a cold, which wasn't such a bad thing as he helped entertain his 3 & 1 year-old cousins, whom I was minding for the entire day.

Tonight naturally there was hoop. Girls in one direction and Wil in the other. Parents likewise.

Made another payment toward Kyoto and called the woman who runs the trip. So far I'm the international member of the group. We had a nice chat about some things that had been on my mind...such as how to deal with the stuff we will be shopping for at the temples, how to transport it and suggestions on bringing it back.

There will be a post office run.

....eeexxxellent

This photo, bye-the-bye....is one of the chrysanthemums Bob brought me last Saturday. He didn't know that they had added dye to the water the flowers were in, and they in turn sucked the dye up the stem into the petals. While the pink one was pretty enough, the effect almost believable, but.... the flower with green dye was just wrong and quite vile. In truth, I prefer them in their original colour. Having said that... I thought to take a picture and decide that I'd do more of the same should he choose to bring more home.....as it has potential in it's own weird little way.