Garden on the Balcony: Day #1
This year, I’ve decided to try to grow a garden. This is hard in an apartment, because I do not have a spot of land I can till and sow (I think those are the terms). Anyway, I’m still going to try. Kaint none of the worlds problem be forgotten when yer gittin yer hands in the dirt.
I went to Pinter’s Flowerland and Lowes this weekend and spent part of the $600 government check I haven’t gotten yet. I realize most people won’t really care about any of this, but it’s more or less a way for me to keep track of the progress throughout the summer. Or, there will be a comedic payoff a few weeks from now when all the photos will show massive plant death.
As you can see, I bought a bunch of “window hangers,” those thin long tubs that hang over balconies. I intend to do just that, but for this week they are staying inside. It’s supposed to get in the low 40s this week and I don’t want to risk it. Next weekend I will put them out on the balcony.
Clockwise, from top-left to bottom-left, I have:
Romaine lettuce and green peppers (shown on the right in this photo). No idea if that’s enough room for them to grow. I guess I’ll find out. Same goes for the ones on the left side… those are strawberries. They are a little droopy ever since I planted them yesterday, but I think it’s just because they have to get used to the new dirt. I also slightly watered them a bit today so maybe that’ll help.
Then:
On the right is more romaine lettuce, and then on the left are four green pepper plants, then above them in the same window box is three cherry tomato plants. Again, not sure about the room once they (hopefully) start to grow. I might have to move things around.
Katy wanted to grow some sunflowers, so right now I have six seeds I’m trying to sprout:
Nothing yet. It’s only been a day, though, so give ‘em some credit.
Next to it in the same style pot is:
Four broccoli plants.
Then, I have another window box with some other seeds:
On the left, the area with no toothpicks, are a bunch of green onion seeds. Four rows of the toothpicks are green bean seeds, and the rest are pea pods. No idea about the size requirements once they sprout, so I’m planning on transplanting them later. The goal right now is to just get them to sprout. The labels say I should see something within 10-15 days.
Then we have a tomato plant. I bought one over the weekend but in the process of putting it into a bigger pot, I broke the stem at the root. No idea if another one would have grown, so I had to throw it out. I went and got another one:
And repotted it:
So there it is… Adam’s Garden: Day #1. Technically, Day #2. Hopefully there’s enough growth by next week, I really want to keep track of this.
Anybody out there know any gardening tips? Usually I’m pretty good with plants so I am optimistic at the moment, but if you have any suggestions I’m all ears. Just please don’t tell me “uh, you can’t grow fruit and vegetables on a balcony in pot’s from Lowes,” because that’s really discouraging.
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EAAARRRTTTHHHHQUUUUAAAKEEEEE!
Kind of off-subject, but I thought it was interesting.
A co-worker this morning said to me, “did you feel the earthquake this morning?” and I was surprised because no, I didn’t, but most importantly — earthquakes in Michigan?!
I remember my dad telling me about one when he was younger, apparently it woke him up. I understand they’re dangerous, but, like a tornado, I’d really like to see/experience one in person some day. At least, a minor one. No house collapsing, please.
Totally not a big deal if you’re in California, but… this is Michigan! Anyway, apparently it was felt as far away as Chicago and Atlanta (Jeff and Nina, did you feel anything? I know Jeff is up at 5:30am sometimes, because that guy never sleeps).
I don’t like April Fools.
I don’t like April Fools, mostly because I can’t really tell when people are joking.
Someone showed me the school paper today and it said that Burt Reynolds’ son was enrolled for the fall semester. Having no reason not to believe it, I said, “Hmm, that’s cool I guess, he’ll probably be popular,” totally not thinking about the fact that it probably wasn’t real, even though the obviously fake photoshop of Burt Reynolds standing in front of the school was right on the front page. Totally didn’t get it.
Then I read today that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will be hosting Saturday Night Live. That’s unusual, but interesting, I said to myself. Totally didn’t get it.
You know why I don’t get these things? Because they’re not funny. They don’t make me go, “ohhh, you got me! Good one!” A joke needs a punchline, and a prank needs relevance.
The purpose of April Fools, I guess, is to be able to point at someone and laugh at their gullibility, in other words making them feel like a fool. And a person’s gullibility is measured by how easily they take something completely absurd to be the truth. Mark Zuckerberg hosting SNL is a strange piece of news, but not out of the realm of possibility.
Work harder, April Foolers!
10 Best April Fools Gags (there are only 9 listed, which is apparently the April Fools joke…. ?)
Top 10 April Fools Pranks for Nerds (most of the ones in the comment section are funnier)
Lost tried to do an April Fools today, too. It only works if you’re one of the strangely obsessive internet-prowling Lost fans (like myself). Someone apparently “found” the last two pages of script for this season, where a female cast member dies in Jack’s arms as a man (presumably Jack’s father) is watching via a satellite.
Happy April Fools! If you’re pulling pranks, at least make them good!
Science Fiction
It’s a slow week with nothing much to talk about. I am in the middle of a great book called “Mammoth” by John Varley, and have a few work related tasks keeping me busy. I’m working on a story that is, for once, coming along nicely. Saturday was my birthday, and even though I turned 25 for some reason my auto insurance rates didn’t go down. That, or my insurance guy is a moron, which could very well be true. Also, I’m learning the guitar since Katy bought me one for my bee-day.
Other than that, I was thinking about science fiction the other day, and what exactly makes it science fiction. For example, stories about aliens are automatically science fiction because life forms other than those on Earth are both scientific in nature and fictional, since they (to our knowledge) do not exist. But on the day that aliens arrive on Earth, are we going to have a mass re-categorizing of all alien-visitor related science fiction to just fiction? I don’t think so. It would be too expensive. For that reason alone, we’ll never make contact with aliens and we’ll never invent time machines. Evil robots remain a possibility since the first thing on their agenda is always annihilating everything with nuclear weapons, thereby destroying all of the fiction anyway.
Anyway, I do not have a point. But Arthur C. Clark died last week, and that means people will automatically like his books more. Case in point, I bought one of his books thanks to a memorial article recapping his work. I was also reminded of the story, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” which I read in 2003 and remember, almost word for word (okay, paragraph by paragraph), which is huge considering I forget nearly everything.
Read it here. (It’s short, I promise, and like biscuits and gravy, will stick with you).
Also, if you are a sci-fi fan like myself, you sometimes lose sight of how awesome (as in awe, not “duuuude”) the universe really is. It’s hard to believe that stuff like this actually exists out there:
Friday: Nothing New
I had a bad week, and I’d usually have a Lost blog up by now but I’ve been so drained to even write anything. I’ll probably have it up by the end of the weekend.
I also have a Nexterday article and another one for Associated Content I wanted to get up today, but didn’t make it! Now the weekend is here and I still have lots more “real” work to do so I’m putting those on hold.
Until then, enjoy this look into Netflix’s distribution center. I always wondered where my movies were coming from, now I know.
Also, I started a Tumblog about all the crap that I eat. It’s good, bookmark it.
My Media Week Meme
As far as I can tell, a “meme” (pronounced like dream) is the offical name of those surveys that people post as bullitens on MySpace. High School is the first time I remember doing one, and back then there wasn’t any MySpace so we pompously emailed them to everyone in our address book.
Anyway, the rules for some of them is that you can “tag” someone else and they have to do it on their blog, then they tag other people, and so on. Mike tagged me, and that’s why you’re reading this post.
It’s about the media I’ve consumed (hungry, hungry, hungry) this past week.
*BOOKS — It was my resolution this year to read lots of books. So far I’ve only completed one this year. I would have finished more, but I have about 5 started, and when I start so many books, they all fight for my attention until none of them get it. I currently have a bookmark in: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy, Everything’s Eventual by Steven King, and a pretty bland Star Trek novel. I also have a reservation to pick up “Virtual Girl,” by Amy Thomson at the library. It’s a story about a guy who creates a sentient female robot, and I love that shit. I also have a stack of unread comics that grows week by week.
*TV — Believe it or not, I really don’t watch that much. There are only a few shows I actually turn on, and I never really sit and flip through the channels like some people. The few shows I’ve watched in the past seven days are Lost, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and a few Discovery/History channel shows like Man vs. Wild and a bad ass documentary showing seven ways human life could become extinct.
*MUSIC — I listened to half of a Tina Turner song yesterday. I also downloaded the song from the MacBook Air commercial because it was catchy, only to finally play it out yesterday and run out of stuff to listen to. I’m just not a music kind of guy, it seems, which is crappy. On the drive to and from work, my Sirius radio is usually on Howard Stern or Spa 73 for ambient music.
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So TAG! Who’s it? I don’t know many people with their own hosted blog, or at least I don’t know them well enough to pass this on, and those I do know well enough have never commented so I’m not sure if they even read this. However, I know lots of people with MySpace blogs so…
