Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Ouch! I was a dumbass earlier today at our community garden while trying to back up with a wheelbarrow full of pulled greenery and completely forgot there was a wooden stump seat right behind me. Yep, I went ass over teakettle and landed on my back, but not before hooking my foot around the wheelbarrow's handle and rolling it. I don't think anything's broken as I can walk on it and put a bit of weight on it, it just feels very sore right now and I'm trying to stay off it as much as I can. I though I'd heard a snap when it happened, but I'm thinking (and hoping) that was just me falling onto the wood chips and not any actual bones fracturing! Yeesh! Well, we'll see in a day or so...

Other than that, we spent a good couple of hours pulling out the old fava bean stalks after a final and very fruitful yield, cut back a few things and pulled whatever else had gone to seed. We'd stopped at the garden center at the southwestern end of town to try out our latest summer crop of things -- lettuces, beans, squash, tomatoes and flowers -- and we're hoping that we won't get hit with another wave of feasting gophers this time...! We'd originally planned on redoing the wiring underneath the plot, but due to other Real Life Things going on, we figure we'll try to do that at a later time when we have more money and patience!

In other news, I've been doing yet another reread of Theadia and I am not the least bit surprised that this story is a bit close to home right now in the current climate. Mind you, it was supposed to do that (I'd started writing it during the Fuckwit's last administration), so I'd like to think that's a good sign then. I'm hoping to get back to it very soon after I finally finish off the remastering of A Division of Souls, which I'm hoping will be within a few months or so!

Today was garden clean-up party day, so A and I headed over and spent a couple of hours weeding, cleaning, replanting, laying down woodchips, and exhausting ourselves. We were also able to get a new board nailed to the side of our shared bed, as one of them was quite rotten and already broken into many pieces. We are now back home and chilling and not doing much of anything else. At this point I have just enough energy to do the laundry and give the kitties occasional attention!

Meanwhile, I have jury duty stand-by all week this week, so I'll need to call in at the end of the day to see if I need to go in. If I were going to the civil court near City Hall I wouldn't mind as much, but this is the criminal court over in SoMa that's a pain in the butt to get to and not easy to find parking for. [Not to mention the building and the neighborhood is kind of dumpy.] We shall see...

Writing: am I actually doing some? Yes! I'm forcing myself back into a daily session again: no major word count to beat or a specific length of time, I just need to get SOMETHING done on a daily basis again. Once I'm back into that groove again, everything else should go back to normal. On Friday morning I somehow managed to FINALLY figure out how to end Theadia in a way I'd be satisfied with, so that should give me a much clearer idea of where to go once I'm caught up with this particular revision. Now if I can maintain this excitement for when I start MU4...

OH! I forgot to add the neat recent thing about the day job! I'd mentioned in my previous entry that I'd spent the entire Wednesday shift cleaning and rearranging the dairy walk-in cooler...so on Saturday, one of the managers walked up to me and thanked me again for doing such a great job as it made the inventory session that much easier...and then followed up by saying "...I've been talking with (Head Boss) about assigning you dairy more often because whenever you do it, things get done." I'm quite tickled about that, to be honest! I really appreciate that this was an honest "thanks for a great job, let's follow up on this" and not a scripted "thank you for all you do, EnterEmployeeNameHere!" Definitely a difference from the Former Day Job in a lot of ways!

No, not of the writing kind but of gardening! The sad news is that gophers seem to have made a rather expensive meal of a corner of our spot at the community garden, having eaten several of our plants and leaving a hole for a tip. I've since learned that several other plots have also been hit in similar ways, so we're hoping that, as the community garden leaders say, it's 'another boom-then-bust' and they eventually go away. We'll have to try a few things, perhaps coffee grounds in the soil and mesh baskets. They are also looking into raptor perches so that our local hawks can stop by and have an al fresco snack or two. [There are many of these birds in GGP which is a half block away, so it shouldn't be too hard to get them over here.]

The better news is that we spent three hours today at the garden's clean-up party, in which several of us partake in central weeding, trimming, cleaning, and so on. A lot of this is desperately needed as several things fell by the wayside during the pandemic. It's hard work, but we're getting there and it's getting closer to what it looked like before 2020. I spent nearly the entire time pulling out seven-by-ten-ish strip of crab grass with ridiculously long roots, so I have just a bit of carpal tunnel going on right now. Ouch! But yeah, it looks much better now.

Thankfully I have tomorrow off (my day job hours are surprisingly very similar to last week's) so that'll give me a bit more time to chill and recuperate!

Today's exercise was spending a few hours at our local community garden. We're tasked with spending at least a few hours a year tidying up the various parts of the garden itself -- weeding, tossing out trash, turning over the compost pile, and whatnot -- so today A and I spent a good two hours getting stuck in. The border fence and wall near our plot was vastly overgrown with weeds and crabgrass so we pulled it all out and it looks SO much better now. I somehow managed to uncover two very large snails while I was at it, and they proceeded to start climbing up the wall for safety. [Sorry we hurt your field, mister!]

There was also a triangle-shaped spot between us and the woodchip pile that was quite weedy as well (there used to be a platform and a greenhouse there but had been torn down a year or so ago and it was all overgrown). I think the organizers were quite impressed by how much we managed to get done, considering A has a very green thumb and I've picked up quite a bit from all those episodes of Gardener's World that we'd been watching over the past few years. We're both a bit sore and dirty but it was really fun work and I'm looking forward to doing it again at some point!

So now it's time for me to finish washing the bedsheets and get a few blogs ready for the next few days...

Another nice but somewhat cool Sunday sees us taking a walk to our garden plot to make sure everything looks good after Friday/Saturday's rain, and yes! It not only looks healthy, some of our greens are actually VERY happy to be there! There's already major growth on the red lettuce and two of the tomato plants, and we only had to deadhead maybe one or two flowers that were already dying back. Quite proud of ourselves for doing pretty well first time out in ages!

After that we picked up a couple of peppermint mochas at one of our favorite coffee shops near Golden Gate Park (Rise & Grind on 8th) then walked back to Clement to do some shopping at the farmers' market. Lots of greens and citrus picked up, plus I was also able to speak to the person at the Rize Up bakery stand to let them know we're selling a ton of their bread at my shop and it's very popular. (We also got cookies from them, which I have not yet eaten, heh.) After a brunch burger n' beer at our usual haunt (the Richmond Republic) we headed back home to chill, relax and stream Time Team Specials on YouTube. 

And speaking of plants, I'm trying to be better at taking care of the plants here in Spare Oom. They're all high up on bookshelves now to be out of kitty range, but in the process I've forgotten to water them every now and again. I just had to toss one of them as it was dead and shriveled up -- I think it was at the end of its cycle anyway -- but the rest aren't looking too bad, maybe just a bit droopy. I try to remember to water them every Sunday, the same day I usually run my PC cleaners and update this here site.

Alas, I skipped working on Theadia last night for various reasons, so I'll need to catch up tonight!

So in order to take this coming Wednesday off they scheduled me for today, and I almost never work on Sundays. This has kind of screwed up my internal calendar because today is literally my Wednesday -- I'm working tomorrow and Tuesday as well. The plus side is that I have not one but TWO days off in a row after that, so I should be back to normal by then.

In other news, A has finally acquired a plot at the local community garden! It's been a long wait but we're quite happy and looking forward to getting stuck in. It's mostly going to be her thing but I'm of course glad to help. I'm just hoping that I won't be too exhausted from the Day Job to join in after work when we want/need to head over there. It's been ages since I've done that sort of thing other than the watering of house plants!

Lastly, I'm planning on starting the rewrite of Theadia tomorrow evening! I'm really looking forward to working on it and giving it the attention and TLC that it really deserves.