Air, Work, and Plants :)

With 90 degree temps recently, and with three 100 degree days on the horizon, I thought it was finally time to break down and put my air conditioner in the studio.
It took a couple hours this morning to kludge it into place, but its stable and will do its job efficiently - if perhaps a little ghetto.
Totally worth it.
Also worth it? Making milkshakes for dinner with friends!

Without sounding too much like I'm complaining about bruises when its raining gold nuggets - with the recent success I've been having at the market I realized that I have not had a day off since the last weekend of June. That makes roughly thirty days of at least 5 hours of work a day, and many 8-10 hour days. And with the heat we are having, I'm just kinda feeling a bit tired O_o
But, work goes on! I refuse to let sales go by when the iron is hot as they say!

I thought, as usual, I would post some more garden pics while I'm here.
Enjoy.


New Stonecrop Matrona, in front of Agastache - the peachy orange flowers behind it that smell like mint... you can't smell it?

Ornamental Pepper plant 'Purple Flash'

Mountain Fire Pieris - the new growth begins as a bright red, in the spring it has little creamy yellow bell flowers.

This is a Dahlia actually! Doesn't look like one, but its a hybrid perenial, and has multiple color blossoms in one plant! You can just barely make out another flower starting to bloom behind the peachy one that will be a fuchsia purple. Amazing what meddling in genetics can do.

Purple Coneflower Echinacea with Bee. There are so many bees in my garden, its great. And so many varieties of bee! Mostly they love the Wallflower pictured below this pic, and the Salvia around the garden. It's so great to see bees and butterflies and hummingbirds around. It's sad ever since I drained the pond (too scummy) that there have been less birds. Or the birds come around, land on the edge of the pond, and just kinda wonder where the water went.
Sorry birds! I promise to fix it soon! Just kinda busy right now... :(

African Daisy (only annual I planted) with Wallflower

Agapanthis! Yay! Came back from near death this winter. Such a pretty color to accentuate almost anything I put next to it. I'm so proud of it. Live Strong and Rock on Agi'

Innovative Fix

the healing power of lego bricks.

http://www.janvormann.com/dispatchworkshop-amsterdam/

Garden Pics

I've been way too busy (for thankfully good reasons: stellar sales at market, and social endeavors in free time) to get in the garden much over the last four weeks. But it's holding out on it's own for now.
I haven't taken great pictures of it for awhile, but I thought I would post some anyway. Just as filler. :)

Camelot Foxglove being healthy:

Mahonia Repens (Creeping Barberry aka Oregon Grape) - it has little yellow cupped flowers in the spring and these little berries in the summer. They are actually edible. I'm waiting for them to turn ripe, but supposedly they will have a very sour taste that is best mixed with other fruits in a jelly. It will produce only enough this season to have a sample taste.
Hollywood Plums, getting bigger. I don't know how long I have to wait now.

I've kept portions of the grass long, and it has turned a crisp dry tan (as grasses do and I love). It provides great habitat for all kinds of little creatures which makes me happy. In the center of this picture is a little blue dragonfly.
Another creature who lives in tall grasses:
This picture shows the first portion of the garden I planted when I moved in. It is not the best organized and I will probably this fall start to rearrange and even split some plants to fill out other areas. But it makes me happy to have a more or less maturing area of the garden.
The orange red flowers are Lucifer Crocosmia, the little yellows dots of flowers are Moonbeam Coreopsis, less noticeable but still there is a Salvia, the Agapanthis I thought froze, some Purple Coneflower Echinacea, and more.
I have a Vintage Wine Echinacea I'm still waiting to bloom.
All be well.

Reality joke

A midget clown walked into my booth this weekend...

That's it, no punchline. It really happened.

The things you just can't make up...

So I met this guy at the market this weekend. It will sound like I'm making fun of him, but in all honesty, he was pretty damn cool.
His name is Atamdev. It means 'something' rejuvenation of soul and 'something'. It was given to him by his Yogi brethren at a 6 week meditation retreat this winter. He is originally from Mexico City but lives up in the mountains of Canada. He is in Portland because there was a bus of kids coming down here and he thought he might tag along. The bus has gone back, but he is living with a relative of the bus driver so that he might check out Portland for longer.
He is a performance artist whose work is mostly focused on gender and sex roles. Specifically how what it was to be a man in the 1950's is different from a man in the 1990's and 1500's and so on.
He is the type of artist who paints but is not a painter, sculpts without being a sculptor, and dances because its simply refined movement.
He wanted to buy one of my pins to wear it in his hair like a barrette. I don't know how.
He knew I was a Pisces without really asking and asked me if I knew the Pisces hand shake. I laughed at him and said I didn't know there was a secret club hand shake, but the other customer in my booth put me in my place by speaking over her shoulder saying that she knew the secret Taurus hand shake.
I talked with this fascinating guy for about an hour total, but in two installments with a ten minute break where on the second visit he had a different shirt on and a different pair of sunglasses.
He had one of those gazes that had no issues looking you directly in the eyes at all times, except for when he closed them to try to remember the name of the artist who painted with chocolate.
He kept looking at his watch like he obviously had somewhere to go, but would then look at me with one of those completely open souled meditation glossed over stares and decide not to go anywhere. He was supposed to be on his way to a B/W gender film festival of some sort but also had an original Star Trek episode reproduction performance in a park that evening which he invited me to.
I told him I had something else going on, which I truthfully did, and he eventually left, but only after he got a hug.
It crossed my mind that he might have been high, but truly, it was only on spirit.

Crayon Physics

I want this game!



http://www.crayonphysics.com/

Pictures of Greyson

I was sneaking around the Perry family's Flickr page and thought I'd share a couple pics of my Godson Greyson Alden Perry!
So cute.
Yay! so happy to see him using them! Sorry if it's only to make noise thus far, but I'm sure he'll become a little architect soon enough.

SCIENCE!!

I can't tell you how many ways this makes me happy about the world we live in.