Tag: August 2013

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130803.html
Entry #1 on this page (tagged: august, art)

My project for july was to write daily in my paper journal, and maybe do some sketching. I missed one day of journalling, towards the end, but otherwise successful and I intend to continue through august.

The sketching part didn't happen as much as I wanted. But I came up with a couple little doodles that I like.

And I made a few sketches inspired by Sara Midda's South of France: A Sketchbook. She made tiny little squares of art... a good idea: I don't have to fill the entire page, just make a one inch square and fill that!

And of course, my printer woes made for several pages of angst, plus a bunch of little squares...

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130804.html
Entry #2 on this page (tagged: august, garden)

Yay the baby sunflower of last weekend is now a beautiful bloom! It's also the shortest sunflower in the whole community garden... everyone else has nine-foot tall sunflowers. This one is barely two feet off the ground! I had to crouch down low to get this photo! haha! cute lil' thing!

And then I spent some time watching the happy bees buzz thru the borage. :) I saw this yellow beetle on one of the flowers... a couple bees noticed the yellow beetle and didn't land on the star flower. But then one of the bees said "Move aside, bug! I've got work to do!"

The beetle moved to the back side of the flower and the bee took sips of nectar then moved on.

This bug, by the way, is a Spotted Cucumber Beetle. He's a "pest" who eats pretty much every garden plant, as an adult. As a larva he eats the roots of corn. I don't have any corn, and I've never seen the beetle on my cucumber plants... just the coreopsis flowers, and now the borage, both of which are quite healthy. So, to me right now: he's just a colourful visitor!

But for future reference: Lacewings and ladybugs will eat the eggs of the Cuc Beetle. And some of the plants which can repel the beetle are broccoli, radish, catnip, calendula. And Nasturtiums...this is the first time I've not had nasturtiums in the garden, I must be sure to replant them next year!

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130811.html
Entry #3 on this page (tagged: august, garden, mailings)

I now have a working printer! I got up and running on monday, and I've been printing and mailing a few things every day. Then I left work early on friday, and was able to put a LOT of stuff in the saturday morning mail!

Might need more stamps!

Lucy and Ethel. Still trying to capture the cuteness, but black faces are impossible! Maybe I should try drawing them?

This is our Grey Stripe Sunflower... Pretty sure the description is about the seeds, not about the flower! :)

The plant is probably 6.5 feet tall, and that's a bud in the center. Our other sunflower plant (the short one) was a Zubulon, and it only had one flower. I'm hoping the Grey Stripe has multiples.

I eat zucchini at every single meal. Even breakfast... zucchini with a few tater tots, quite tasty! But I can't keep up with the garden abundance. Thinking about freezing some...

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130817.html
Entry #4 on this page (tagged: august, garden)

Today I read that they've discovered a microorganism in dirt makes you happy. ha!

∞  How Dirt Makes Us Smart And Happy at Green Gardening with Anne Lovejoy. (Animal testing makes me sad. But I'll work it off by breathing in the garden. AND by buying cruelty-free!)

The sunflower is now too tall for me to take a pic of the top. I'm not sure what's going on up there!

And, for the first time this year, I have more lemon cucs than I can eat in one day! The tiny little pathetic lemon cucumber plant... has grown huge! Yay!

hm, looks like it's time to make some new feathers!

Well. Making feathers is probably hard work. If I were a crow, I'd probably put it off for as long as I could. The crows around me would say, "Sheesh, rift. Why don't you molt or something?!"

And I'd just shrug and say "eh."

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130818.html
Entry #5 on this page (tagged: august)

In my Internet wanderings, I ran across two book lists that interested me.

∞  Locus Best All-Time Fantasy Novels
∞  Locus Best All-Time Science Fiction Novels

The lists caught my attention because I consider myself a science fiction reader, but I've read more books from the Fantasy list. And I did not enjoy several of the books that I had read from the Science Fiction list!

Here's the Fantasy List. The ones in bold are the books I've read.

1) The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien (1955)
2) The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)
3) A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
4) The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe (1980)
5) The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle (1968) ♥
6) The Once and Future King, T. H. White (1958)
7) Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny (1970)
8) The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (1977)
9) Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey (1968) ♥
10) Little, Big, John Crowley (1981)
11) Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865)
12) The Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake (1950)
13) The Riddlemaster of Hed, Patricia A. McKillip (1976)
14) The Incompleat Enchanter, Fletcher Pratt & L. Sprague de Camp (1941)
15) Watership Down, Richard Adams (1972)
16) The Dying Earth, Jack Vance (1950)
17) Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein (1963)
18) A Spell for Chameleon, Piers Anthony (1977)
19) Dracula, Bram Stoker (1897)
20) The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (1900)
21) Silverlock, John Myers Myers (1949)
22) Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury (1962)
23*) The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey (1978) ♥
23*) The Stand, Stephen King (1978)
25) Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg (1980)
26) The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis (1950)
27) The Shining, Stephen King (1977)
28) Conjure Wife, Fritz Leiber (1953)
29*) Deryni Rising, Katherine Kurtz (1970)
29*) The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison (1922)
31) Witch World, Andre Norton (1963)
32) Salem's Lot, Stephen King (1975)
33) A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (1962)

And the Science Fiction list...

1) Dune, Frank Herbert (1965)
2) The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
3) Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke (1953)
4) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein (1966)
5) Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein (1961)
6) The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov (1953)
7) A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr (1959)
8) Gateway, Frederik Pohl (1977)
9) Ringworld, Larry Niven (1970)
10) The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester (1956)
11) Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny (1967)
12) More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon (1953)
13) The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (1974)
14) The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (1962)
15) The Time Machine, H. G. Wells (1895)
16) Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner (1968)
17) The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) ♥
18*) The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester (1953)
18*) The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (1974)
20) The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (1950)
21) Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
22) Dying Inside, Robert Silverberg (1972)
23) Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany (1975)
24) Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein (1973)
25*) Way Station, Clifford D. Simak (1963)
25*) Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
27) To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer (1971)
28) Earth Abides, George R. Stewart (1949)
29) The Door Into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein (1957)
30) City, Clifford D. Simak (1952)
31) The Witches of Karres, James H. Schmitz (1966)
32) The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke (1956)
33) The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov (1953)
34) 1984, George Orwell (1949)
35) Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith (1975)
36) Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement (1954)
37) Ubik, Philip K. Dick (1969)
38*) Timescape, Gregory Benford (1980)
38*) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke (1968)
40) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)
41) Downbelow Station, C. J. Cherryh (1981)
42) The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells (1898)
43) Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon (1930)
44) Double Star, Robert A. Heinlein (1956)
45) Davy, Edgar Pangborn (1964)

15 Fantasy Novels read, three of them favorites.
And 10 Science Fiction Novels read, with only one that I liked.

There are several books on the SF list that I've attempted to read but are so horribly boring I couldn't finish them. And there are several authors in the SF list that I dislike.

So: am I a fantasy reader, after all?

Hmm. On the SF list, I have read about ½ of those books within the past 10 years or so. Whereas on the Fant list, many were read when I was a kid... I've only read one or two books in the past 10 years.

I guess I'm just someone who likes to read!

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130824.html
Entry #6 on this page (tagged: august, garden, mailings)

We almost have a sunflower...

We brought home almost 10 pounds of food from our garden plot today. Mostly zucchini, lots of cherry tomatoes, several cucumbers and six lemon cucumbers. I suppose we're averaging about 15+ pounds of food per week?

Yes, I'm kind of sick of zucchini. So I've been trying to keep up with the lemon cucumbers instead.

The bees are still very busy and soon this flower will turn into a lemon cuc. Along with dozens more!

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 18:03:42 PDT

Weekly Mail Check-in
This Week: 49 mailings
Total This Month: 110 mailings

I've met my goal of beating my February mail count, which was 108. And I've still got most of a week to bump up my numbers even more!

I've now completed my extra "non-month" postcard mail and I am two postcards shy of completing my June mail. Since I don't yet have a photo picked out for my July mail, I'm going to focus on some replies in the final week of August.

Yay Mail!

Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130831.html
Entry #7 on this page (tagged: august, mailings)

Weekly Mail Check-in
This Week: 11 mailings
Total This Month: 121 mailings

Yay Snail Mail!

I'm not sure what my project for september will be. But here are some thoughts...

The goal is to write 20 blog posts about vegan food. I love the idea, and I usually skim a few VeganMoFo blogs ... But I don't enjoy kitchen-time and try to avoid cooking.

That said, I do want to support vegan ideas. So I'll be posting something!

The last week of september is Banned Books Week... I celebrate by reading a few books that have been censored!

Just glancing through, I might read: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Bridge to Terabithia (I loved the movie!).

What books will you read?

And then there are the Additional snail mail projects!

Static8 > Journal > 2013 Archive > Tag: August

<< BackTo July 2013 --- GoTo September 2013 >>

Site Map