My first attempt at orchid pruning

Aww. My orchid finally ran out of gas, or at least the flowers did. They lasted until the end of June. Six months! Supposedly, I can get another spray from the same stem. Just cut it at the first node down from the spent flowers. Or cut it two or three nodes up from the […]

Mulberries!

Along with the daily pint of mixed berries, today I finally picked two whole mulberries. Two delicious, rich-tasting mulberries from a tree I planted this spring. A tree that I nearly killed by leaving it in its shipping box for a week and watering the wrong end. I’ve heard that mulberries are robust trees (a […]

Readercon 20 coming right up

Readercon 20 starts this Thursday through Sunday. Even it’s my favorite con in the area, it always sneaks up on me. There’s already friends and teachers I expect to see. And there’s so many interesting things in the schedule, I’m sure I’ll be a blithering wreck by Sunday afternoon. So, my posting may get a […]

The water lily and the guppies

This is why I keep guppies–for the water lily. One water lily in a free-standing black tub. Keeping even such a small lily pond means setting up a whole system. I add hornwort and anachris to aerate the water. I add water hyacinths to help clear the water with their roots and for a few […]

Summer, still?

Ah! Another barbeque perfect day. How long can it last? And the first coneflowers are stretching out their purple wings, oblivious to their inevitable, tatty fate. For now, they’re sunny and happy and ready for the bees.

Yay, summer!

Finally. A nice sunny day! Just in time for the Fourth. The lilies are happy too, all pink and yellow, swaying in the sun. Other than that, no fireworks here. You should be outside watching yours.

Hugo 2009 roundup

Well, I’ve read all of the Hugo nominees that I’m going to. I managed the first chapter of Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross, and kept putting off returning to it. The perky tone of Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi is exactly the kind of YA that punts me right out. Then I ran out of […]

Re: True Names

Filled with computronium, parity checkers, references to running hot or slow, and sockpuppets, “True Names“, by Cory Doctorow & Benjamin Rosenbaum is a breakneck story about the struggles of numerous instances of personalities fighting in various levels of reality over love, power, and–what else?–suzeranity over the universe. Beebe is a chaotic civilization of personalities. They […]

Iceberg in lettuce

Iceberg lettuce looks like something you have to form, not at all like a natural object a plant can grow. But they do grow. With all the rain, hard cores have been forming inside. It’s been amazing to watch the leaves curl inward and iceberg itself. But with all the rain, some of the outer […]

Re: The Tear

Ian McDonald makes difficult reading. I had to machete my way through Brasyl and it took me three tries to read “The Tear.” It’s a dense story, filled interesting ideas and beautiful language on a grand scale. There’s so many peoples and places and worlds and universes, it’s just too much to take in at […]