Happy Anniversary, House!

It was a year ago this week that I got my keys to my first (and current) house! Yay!
When I think back it is truly surprising to me to realize that all of the changes I have made have occured over only one year. It 'feels' like I've lived here for a year, but it 'seems' like longer. I hope you see the difference there :}
It was, and has been truly a dream come true. I cannot believe how powerful the simple feeling of ownership over your immediate surroundings can be. It's like an empty canvas; you can do whatever you want. You can paint or change or build or add to or break down to your hearts content. I can break down walls if I wanted. I don't have to ask anyone! I can just do it!
Especially of course building the garden has been the most joy, seeing it grow and change on its own as well as from my own hands is spectacular.
I didn't tell anyone that attended my party on Sat but one of the intents of the party was to celebrate, with my house, my first year with the house. It's of course silly, but for all the times that I am alone in my house and love it, it's mostly when people are there, that it feels like the house it is supposed to be :) It's great.
Speaking of said party, it was phenominally joyous, a fantastic addition to a fantastic weekend. Couldn't be happier. Perfect weather, fresh fruit, growing relationships with friends old and new, laughing a lot, seeing accomplishments (such as the patio I laid) coming to be appreciated and used. I even got to share a little bit of my ancestors spirit by getting out my grandfathers telescope on a whim and showing a darling four year old the moon.
It's completely silly how good it feels to see someone get in my hammock and curl into it like I do, or just at all being used as a seat at a party; or to have people wearing roses from the garden in their hair; or to simply take pictures of the garden to have on their phone or take home and remember the beauty I get to see everyday.
It's awesome.
To share things important to you, to see them living out their duty, and to have people you care about appreciate them - rocks.

Cute Radio Short

I heard this audio short today.
It was one of those things that forced me to literally freeze what I was doing to listen with my utmost attention. Good thing it was only three minutes long!
Super cute radio "poem" a father made of his daughters growing from a baby to a thirteen year old.

http://www.vimeo.com/3502682

Flagstone Laid; more work still ahead

Thought I'd show what the flagstone looks like all laid out!
I still need to work on bordering it in, retaining that 10 inch level difference on the side, figure out whether I will border the pond with the same flagstone, build a bench out of some of the flagstone left... stuff.
But I'm happy with the result so far.


And a couple bonus pics just cause:

Asiatic Lily bursting

And a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly that's been hanging around a lot lately. (probably not same one, or maybe so, no idea really)
He's on my Bowless Wallflower, which is the only thing she/he cares for.

End of the Road by John Barth

So a friend recommended this book to me awhile back, and then later reported on it being one of her favorite books, so I thought I would give it a rent.
She might be upset that this means I will be in the middle of four books right now, but three of them are pretty short :}
Anyway, within the first two pages (and I am only thirty pages into it) there was a section that literally made me stop and smile to find that there was someone, if not the writer, than the written character who, if not in the exact language I use, was going over the same ridiculous thoughts in simple situations as I feel.
Here's a passage:
"Arms folded, akimbo, or dangling: hands grasping the seat edges or thighs, or clasped behind the head or resting in the lap - these (and their numerous degrees and variations) are all in their own ways satisfactory positions for the arms and hands , and if I shift from one to another, this shifting is really not so much a manifestation of embarrassment, or hasn't been since the first half-dozen interviews, as a recognition of the fact that when one is faced with such a multitude of desirable choices, no one choice seems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any one of the others it would not be found inferior.
It seems to me at just this moment (I am writing this at 7:55 in the evening of Tuesday, October 4, 1955, upstairs in the dormitory) that, should you choose to consider that final observation as a metaphor, it is the story of my life in a sentence - to be precise, in the latter member of a double predicate nominative expression in the second independent clause of a rather intricate compound sentence."

I put in bold the most relative part, since, as you have read, it is a rather intricate compound sentence. :)
At first John Barth reminds me of Samuel Beckett in that his speech is amazing to me and I am immediately drawn in by the very life essence of it and taken aback by the complexity of it. I loved Beckett in college, being existentialist, but must admit it was VERY difficult to get through his work.
I feel I will be able to go in small doses with End of the Road, and will be both sad and glad it is a rather short book, full of complicated everyday situations, or rather, everyday situations made rather complicated by the brain in its workings.
Maybe I'll post an actual review once I'm more than thirty pages into it!

Cheers.

Admition

I've been having a vanilla cream Oreo (not the dark brown) in with my Special K cereal in the mornings recently...

Some Pen Drawings

I haven't put any artwork up on this blog in awhile, so I thought I would show these pen drawings (ballpoint actually) I did that I think I will be adding to my Black and White wall collection.
They are only about 3 inches x 4 inches. They were the results of doodling at the Saturday Market on a slow day.
And just to clarify, it is a rare percentage of doodles that turn out as well as I think these did. :)
Cheers!

Journalizing

I think that my love of potential - the feeling of something being able to happen, teetering on the precipice of being and not being - is a direct connection to my love of imagination, sometimes more than reality.
The idea that something 'could be' tends to make me happier than the thing happening itself. Kind of like anticipation being greater than the show, but more like the 'idea' of a thing (be it a story, or activity, or painting) is sometimes better than the executed product. Not always of course.
This in turn (the love of 'could be' but not is) could be linked to a fear of failure (failing at execution of said idea). And a fear of commitment for that matter (not necessarily in cliched relationship usage). Making a choice, acting out towards a goal, is, to me, an act or form of dominance and permanence - two things that im not perfectly comfortable with.
This may, however, might simply be saying that I'm just not comfortable in a role of confidence.

Quote From Spiritualized

"if i am good, i could add years to my life,
(but) i would rather add some life to my years"

Lyric from Out of Sight, by Spiritualized

Mental RollerCoaster over Moths

So someone just recently told me that all the little red shiny pupae that I find and save in my garden while I'm digging around are Cutworms, well cutworm pupae.
When I was given a name and told they were devastating and a pest and plague I was stricken. I'd saved at least twenty of these things, very cautiously and graciously - only to find that they are evil.
So I was hurt for the day, really, like I was harboring satan in my garden.
And as I thought had been the case, all the little green and brown caterpillars I had also been saving were the larval form of the red shiny pupae. I was under no illusions that the caterpillars I had were "good" to have around. I mean, yeah, they gotta eat, and their going to like to eat my garden. I figured, there's enough to go around, go ahead. You'll be butterflies and enhance beauty in the world.
Then I found out that they don't just like to eat plants daintily and around the edges, saving some for others or for later, or to allow the plant to live, no, they like to chop it at the base or eat all the new growth to the ground.
This explains much death in my garden.

But I also found out that we are nearing the end of the larval season (caterpillar) and many more will be pupae soon (the little red shiny things) which don't do much but wiggle in the ground, meaning they will be nothing but brown moths soon. So nothing to sweat over, at least for the rest of this season.
Of course all the moths will then be propagating and laying eggs in my garden for next year....

Shit, well WTF, I survived. The garden is surviving. Maybe casualties, but not a plague. Maybe they are "evil" in some eyes, and I understand that completely. But it is life, and if nothing else, having a garden is bringing me closer to this intimate understanding that I have always naturally had, that life is life, and it all has a place. I can't cut my lawn or prune my plants or kill hardly anything because it's just doing what its supposed to.

Moral of the story: I got caught up in the "evil" labels that people were putting out there without taken my own experience into consideration. I can live with evil. I may not save it the with such grace anymore, but I can live with it.

PS - this whole issue becomes hazy when you start taking into consideration non-native species, or species that truly are extremely destructive like japanese pine beetles and star thistle and zebra mussles. But then again... thats just what I've been told.

oh and dandelions, no room in my garden for those pushy bastards.