Out of Avalon

August 25th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Last fall, I cleared the quick-growing weeds and rocks out of my newly-built herb garden.  All my actual herbs were in pots on the back deck, as usual.  Since I had so much empty space and wanted to get my poor plants through the winter intact, I carefully buried them up to their throats in soft black soil and vowed to dig them back up come springtime.  The plants included thyme and several varieties of mint.

Yes, I can hear you laughing through your modem.

Of course, by the time the ground thawed and we stopped having more than occasional frosts, I was tired and pregnant and not about to drag myself outside to kneel over a patch of dirt.  By late May, I’d regained enough energy to fill in the spaces around the surviving plants with more herbs, but not enough to dig up the mint.  I meant to–really!

By late July/early August, things were really starting to get out of control.  The peppermint and chocolate mint were massive, gangly invaders, and the lemon balm–which had started as a cute little sweet-smelling plant I’d bought just because I liked it and thought it would remain small–was even worse than the mint.  It had crowded out my poor tricolor sage, and while the sage fought valiantly, it was a losing battle.  I chopped mints and lemon balm back drastically several times, and each time it just grew right back with a vengeance.

Just prior to Pennsic, I dug up the orange mint, smallest of them all, and relocated it to a pot on the deck.  It seems to like it there, and I like having a pepper plant in its place.  Sunday night, I finally took a deep breath and started hacking away at the two remaining mints and the lemon balm.  The central portion of each was potted, and the runners were thrown down over the hill.  Maybe they’ll take hold; maybe not.  I don’t really care about that patch of ground and likely never will.  I sent the leafy cuttings to work with J for one of his coworkers.  The peppermint had A LOT of roots and runners, and I was careful to churn up the entirely surrounding area to get them all out.  I’ll be keeping an eye on it for the rest of the year to make sure it doesn’t come back.  The chocolate mint wasn’t nearly as bad, to my surprise.  I didn’t actually uproot the lemon balm, but I cut it back so far that there are only a few leaves remaining.  It’s supposed to be an annual anyway, so I’m not as concerned with it long-term.  Luckily, it hadn’t flowered yet, so I don’t think I’ll have to worry about seeds.

And so this is a story about how I won the war against my own stupidity.  You can actually see soil again in my lovely little garden, and I plan to sprinkle more weed preventer (corn gluten meal) over it tonight or tomorrow, whenever I have time.  I’d been neglecting to do so this summer, and the weeds started to get out of control as well.  I need to cage the tomato J planted for me, and I have two medium-size green bell peppers that I’m keeping an eye on.  I think my two biggest concerns will be how to help the more tender perennials make it through the winter and how I ought to treat my lavender, which is overstepping its bounds just a little thanks to all the rain we had here during Pennsic.

Don’t worry, lavender.  I still love you.  Just play nice for now on, okay?

August 17th, 2009 by Ascelyn

I weeded and cut back the herb garden the morning I left to go on vacation, but apparently that whole week it was hot and rainy. I returned to a giant patch of green insanity. Unfortunately, it’s stayed hot, and with my big belly in the way I haven’t been as willing to kneel on the ground and pull weeds (or overgrown herbs) as I normally would be. Instead, I glare it it as I walk by on the way into the house in the evening and hope it knows what’s good for it. (It doesn’t.)

My lavender really picked up this month, particularly the Munstead, but it was a bigger plant than the other two to begin with. The cilantro is now officially coriander, and the basil flowered a bit too much while I was away and the leaves are starting to die off. Otherwise, though, it’s been the most productive, bushiest basil plant I’ve ever had, probably because it was planted just before a late cold snap and died back almost to the ground right away. My basil is usually tall and leggy because I don’t cut it enough early on, and this solved that problem. Both kinds of thyme are doing great, as is the purple sage, but the tricolor has been overshadowed by some rampant chocolate mint and hasn’t spread out as much as I might have wished. Stupid mints. I meant to move them out of the garden first thing this spring, and never got around to doing the major digging it would require. Also, the lovely little lemon balm plant I picked up a few months ago? Is apparently related to mint. Therefore, it is awesome but evil. It’s also part to blame for the sage’s current predicament.

The oregano is doing well now that I’ve been cutting bits of it off to give away to people, though it’s funny looking because it topples over in places and stays upright in others. Chamomile is still clinging to life but getting browner by the day, though I never actually got around to drying any. I’m surprised how big that one little plant got. There’s something to be said for cute little flowers. The parsley is…uh…gone? I don’t even know where I planted it. I think I’ll blame its apparent demise on the mint just for good measure.

I also stuck two little bell pepper plants in the ground very, very late in the season. One grew over a foot while I was gone, and the other has a medium-size pepper on it! I’m so excited! My tomato and pepper plants always went on the hill beside my house before, and while the tomatoes were usually okay because I planted them so deep and at the top (flatter) part, I don’t know that I ever got a pepper off all those plants I so carefully nurtured from seed. Now I have one. Go me! My one tomato plant for this year, on the other hand, is still only about 8″ tall, so I’m not expecting much. I use peppers more anyway, so whatever.

I lurve my little garden, can you tell? It’s been the perfect size for me, and I rather like getting to make people a little happier by giving away free fresh herbs. So much easier than finding people to take yet another tomato or zucchini. My next goal is to figure out how to help the perennials, most of which are “tender,” make it through the winter without resorting to mulch, bane of my existence that it is. It’s also nice having a small garden full of cheap plants so that when I inevitably kill something off I know it’s only a matter of a few dollars or a few months’ patience with seedlings to make everything better.

May 20th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Looks like the cold night, or something, did in my basil.  Oh well.  Looks like I have to go plant shopping again!

May 19th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Last week, I finally became un-lazy (ha!) and weeded the herb garden.  Since it’s a rather small thing, it’s not like this was a massive undertaking.  I’ve just been tired and procrastinating as usual, and besides (reasons the lazy girl), the weather’s been fluctuating wildly as it is wont to do here in the spring, so why bother now when it might snow tomorrow?

Right.  Except that the weeds had gotten so tall that I couldn’t even see which of the plants I’d stuck there to overwinter last fall had actually made it.  As it ends up, those would be the thyme, peppermint, chocolate mint, and orange mint.  The apple mint and all the other cooking herbs bit the dust.

In order to make myself actual go outside and pull weeds, I offered myself a bribe:  I could buy new plants when I had a clean bed in which to plant them.  Usually, I’d be horrified at the idea of paying for individual plants instead of starting them myself or begging cuttings from friends, but I never got around to doing any of that this year.  Besides (again with the lazy reasoning), the herbs at Nature’s Art aren’t all that expensive at all, and I love that place and would like to help ensure that they remain in business for the rest of eternity.  Plus, they don’t die on you like the stupid plants from Lowe’s and Walmart do, and the people who work there are friendly and super helpful, unlike the people at the other local greenhouses.

As of yesterday evening, my garden has the preexisting thyme and mints, plus lemon thyme, purple sage, tricolor sage, three kinds of lavender, sweet basil, Italian oregano, curly-leaf parsley, cilantro/coriander, lemon balm, and chamomile.  And a random weed that currently has very pretty blue flowers that I hadn’t the heart to pull out.

I need to dig out and pot or relocate two of the mints before they start flowering and hybridize.  I’d like to fill in those spaces with veggies, maybe carrots or a pepper plant.  I’d really wanted to try growing mustard and garlic this year, just to experiment, but I’m not quite sure how to start.  I tried onions one year, but not a single one of them grew, so I’m not wasting my time right now.  It’s too late to start peas, but I might try green beans out back where there’s more room for the trellis.  Strawberries would be nice.  Maybe I’ll put in a few strawberries just so I can munch on them while I’m pulling weeds this summer.  Too bad I don’t like lettuce or tomatoes.  I’m really good at growing lettuce and tomatoes.  As in, way more in one little patch than my parents and brother could consume.

Now let’s hope last night’s unexpected frost didn’t kill them all.

June 11th, 2008 by Ascelyn

It has been a trying week so far.

I’m not pregnant, but nor did I expect that I was.  There’s something to be said for pessimism.  However, now I get to suffer all the consequences.  Much as I didn’t like some of the side affects of the pills, by all that is good and holy, this hurts.  I almost can’t wait to get back on them again.

I finished The Silver Chair last night, which means I’ve reread all the Narnia books except The Last Battle.  One girl at church has already tried to trick me by watching the movie instead of reading the book, but I caught her easily with the questions they had to answer to get the points.  Sorry, M, but there were no windows broken in the book.  Rather than go straight onto The Last Battle last night, I started Magic Kingdom for Sale–Sold! by Terry Brooks, who I love.  I’ve been wanting to read it for ages after seeing it in the back of the Shannara books, but I just found it in a box of sci-fi and fantasy given to me by a fellow Freecycler.  By the second page, you find that not only did the protagonist’s wife die a few years before, but that she was three months pregnant at the time.  I stared at it for a moment, then threw the book at the floor and started crying.  Yes, I’m a hormonal sack of crazy wussiness.  Jason, sitting three feet away checking to see how well I’d stuck to my budget in previous months, stared at me for a moment and said not a word.  A few moments later he asked me whether a particular purchase at Lowe’s was for the house, the church, or an SCA project.  It was my turn to stare at him, blurry-eyed, in disbelief.  I love my husband with all my heart, but have a little sensitivity.

I abhor the country station more than usual lately.  Not only does the music generally make me want to puncture my own eardrums, but every. freaking. song. is about pregnancy, children, or death.  Give me some variation of acoustic instrumentals, screaming metal and punk, or driving electric and drums, please.  Preferably baby-free.

I’m having a rough time with the company building my tent.  More on that later.  Suffice it to say that I have gone from being quite hopeful to extremely displeased.

I’m beginning to lose my patience with Obnoxious New Guy and Annoying Intern.  Sleepy Intern has been reduced in status to merely juvenile and amazing in his unflinching refusal to abide by typical corporate protocols.  You know, the ones like “don’t prop your feet up on the conference room table and sleep through your first day in the office.”  Work stories, however, deserve their very own post.

KG’s pain has worsened again.  I’ve been forced to give her another “get help for yourself or I’ll get it for you” ultimatum, but have not yet set a date.  That will be discussed after church tomorrow evening.

I will likely be driving a Scadian lady new to our area down to Highland River Melees this weekend.  This means that I probably won’t be able to head down early and visit Steve, who leaves for good on Saturday.  I’ve met this particular lady exactly once, for about half an hour, and she makes me nervous.  Not in an “I’m going to stab you” sort of way, but in a typical Cumberland sort of way.  Also, she likes to talk about herself, to the extent that she talked at me for about half an hour on the phone while I was in Lowe’s the other day.  Just repeating the same things over and over–much like KG, actually, only an adult.  I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, nor convince her that I really had to go.  And yes, she knew I was in a store and that my phone battery was dying.  While I “talk” a lot when writing–my entries here and my emails will certainly attest to that–I try to be more courteous in actual conversation.  I’m also very bad at interrupting after spending my formative years being constantly interrupted by my father, who would tell me quite plainly that “[my] opinion doesn’t matter, so shut up about it.”  This is actually to the extent of being a fault, especially when it comes to the kids talking to me and needing to take control over the conversation so that we can continue with the lesson.  Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to the ride down.

The following whine might sound callous and selfish, but pray don’t take it that way.  It is simply an observation of what I’m finding about my inner self, which is essentially what this journal is meant to be:  records and observations.  So here it is:  I’ve never had a friend die before.  Oh, I’ve been around death, even the death of people with whom I was close or of younger people, but it’s always been older relatves or people I didn’t know all that well and with whom I had no real connection.  With Adam, it’s been hard.  I knew he was sick, but while I knew in my head that death is always a possibility even for the healthiest of people, I never really believed in my heart that it would come to that.  He was like a light in the room that is our world–you can’t really imagine it being gone.  Dimmed for a while, maybe, but not gone.  Now whenever I allow myself to come out of that mode of impartial observer, I find my eyes burning.  I can’t imagine him not being at HRM, or leading the Hagerstown group as it forms the canton, or waiting for the other gamers when I go to the community room to sew.  I hadn’t seen him in a while anyway, but I can’t seem to convince myself that I never will again.  I miss him.  And you know what?  It’s nothing like missing a grandmother who’s not been “herself” for some time, or a person you knew long ago but never really liked much.  I’m 22.  I’m not supposed to be losing friends yet.

So in other words, the week itself has kind of sucked.  But take heart! for the weekend was far better.  No, before you ask, I didn’t even touch a needle and thread.  As the pain in my abdomen seems to be less curl-up-in-a-ball-and-scream intense today, I hope to get some done tonight.  That leaves tomorrow after church and Friday morning for the mini pineapple upside-down cakes for the bakesale.

What I did accomplish was filling my new herb garden most of the way with dirt.  Very lovely dirt, actually, rich and black with an abundance of worms.  Unfortunately, also an abundance of ants (thousands! millions!), but they’ve settled down over the last few days.  Better yet, it was all free.  Most of it was dug up when Randy helped us level the site for the shed.  I’m not sure where it came from, considering that the rest of the cleared property is a massive shale bed, but I’m grateful for it.  We’ll top off the last inch or so with bought topsoil, I’ll work in organic fertilizer (basically chicken droppings) and corn gluten meal (keeps weed seeds from sprouting by impeding the growth of the first roots that emerge from them), and I’ll transplant my poor little herbs.  About half have died since taking them outside, and the rest get watered twice a day and still dry out in between.  The weather’s been up in the 90s for days.

I also hung the hammock I bought in Honduras over the weekend.  I heart my hammock.  Too bad it took about a year to the day to get it up.  It’s heaven made from fibers, hanging in my own yard.  We even found the perfect place for it, though I didn’t think there would be one.

I made strawberry daiquiris, sans alcohol.  I’m working on perfecting my own mix so I can avoid the glut of corn syrup present in the cans of frozen daiquiri goo from the grocery store.

I bought a quart of fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market yesterday.  The ones on the bottom were half rotten.  No worries; there were three other people selling them.  I’ll go elsewhere with my $3.50 next time.

I made meatloaf for the first time in my life and chicken cattiatore.

This has become long enough already, so the rambling will stop here.  I need to go make some phone calls anyway.

April 9th, 2008 by Ascelyn

The following is a summary of my progress on my A&S 50 persona challenge.  I made a nifty table for myself to keep track of progress and completion on each goal, but it doesn’t want to copy into WordPress and I don’t feel like actually bothering with HTML right now.  Maybe later….

Garb:  I finished my first pair of fitted stockings.  The foot part is slightly too big, so the fabric bunches a bit behind my heel, but it was close enough that I went ahead and copied my muslin prototpye into a cotton linen blend that was laying around.  I also made and wore muslin copies of the veil and sleeveless shift I intend to eventually copy into linen.  My shoes are finished, and the wood is cut for my pattens, though I’m running into problems finding some sort of small nail or tack to hold the leather to the wood without splitting it.

Fiber:  I made a top-whorl drop spindle from scrap wood from the pattens and a piece of dowel with a hook in one end.  It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it works quite well.  I spun three little bundles of short-staple wool and one of a pretty grey and brown long-staple wool a friend had on hand at Highland Foorde’s collegium last month.  Since they’re probably not even enough to weave, I think I’m going to learn to knit or naalbind and use them for that.  I learned a new fingerloop pattern at the collegium, so I’m on my way toward my “learn five new patterns and actually use them for something productive” goal.

Plants:  Seeds are started indoors, cuttings are rooting or promised when I can pick them up, and I have the boards for my planned medieval herb garden.  This year I’m hoping to start with sage, chamomile, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, chives, and a few others I’m forgetting at the moment.  I’ll have various types of mint in pots since I fear it would take over the whole bed otherwise.  Not all correct for my time and region, but at least they were known in our general period.  There will also hopefully be onions and strawberries.

Cooking:  I tried the 14th-century apple pie from The Forme of Cury as redacted at Gode Cookery, but the coffin simply refused to work no matter what I did.  Since it was for a potluck, I eventually just dumped the contents into a ceramic casserole dish and baked it like that.  Very tasty, but disappointing as a whole.

March 31st, 2008 by Ascelyn

This weekend was almost entirely unproductive.  Well, not entirely.  I cleaned the bedroom and folded the multiple baskets of clean laundry sitting around the room.  Hey, I even ironed the non-t-shirt stuff before I hung it up!  That’s love, right there.  I’m probably the worst ironer out there, adding more (nicely pressed) creases than I take out.  It took me literally all night to iron my NROTC uniform in 2004, and I haven’t gotten any better since.

I have Jason talked into helping me put in an herb garden just off the deck outside the kitchen.  We borrowed my dad’s truck to pick up the boards on Friday with hopes to build it on Saturday.  Unfortunately, Lowes only carries pressure-treated landscaping timbers.  The main alternative was cedar, which was beautiful but absurdly expensive.  I’m currently looking into the chemicals used to pressure treat lumber, and it seems that the inorganic arsenic is the main problem.  It looks like it should be okay if I can’t find an alternative.  There are some nice alternatives out there, too, but probably not in this area.  We’re going to see if a friend’s brothers can get us some locally-grown locust wood for a good price.

I didn’t get to start my seeds Friday evening as I had planned.  Not Saturday, either, and Sunday was taken up by church, lunch with friends, and cleaning.  I got to spend lots of time with J over the weekend, though, which was great.

This week will be pretty crazy, even though I think work will be kind of slow.  I need to tutor chem at least twice this week, make Aaron’s birthday gift, scrub the house for the Western Reaches thing Saturday, get my garden stuff started and put together a compost bin, sort out some insurance issues, and find enough pallets or a source of cheap wood for the kids’ activity on Saturday (mini medieval herb gardens).  At least I’ll keep busy, which is the best possible thing I could be doing right now, but there will be so much downtime at work that I think it’s going to be a double-edged sword.  Too much time to think here, too much time to wish I was another person in another place.  At the same time, I’m itching to get home and get to work on things I actually need to have done before the end of the week.

If you’ve seen the movie Mirrormask, you’ll remember Helena and others running from those grasping, hunting black tendrils of shadow.  That’s how I feel lately.  Still alive, still whole, but always on the run.  Sometimes I’ll be able to hide myself away–in the company of others, in my work and activities, in books–but sooner or later I’ll be forced back outside and the hunt will continue.  Shadows will sneak around corners in unexpected places, taking me off guard.  I loose my balance and can’t run as fast or as straight, and sometimes they’ll catch me because of it.  Eventually it all comes crashing down, and there I sit, huddled in a corner with my knees drawn up close, as the shadows surround me.  I feel so helpless that I don’t even bother to get up before I’m plunged into darkness.

I’m not depressed now, but is it only a matter of time?

March 28th, 2008 by Ascelyn

Usually if I don’t write it’s because I’ve been down.  As I’ve mentioned before, when that’s the case, I feel like I ought to explain it, and that’s just not a good idea.  The vast majority of my writing is done at work due to the internet lackage at the house, and I have no desire to have my boss walk in on me in tears during my lunch break.

This time, though, I’ve just been busy.  Without violating any security regs or saying precisely what I do at work, I’ll just mention that a certain item we’re now needing to use has a 48-hour shelf life.  That’s just two days between the time when I make the stuff to the time the part has to be finished and in the oven, and it takes every waking moment of about 46 of those 48 hours to accomplish all that needs to be done.  There is very little sitting during that time, and it’s a killer on my joints.  It also contains a known teratogen, again as mentioned previously, which means I automatically don’t like it.

But that’s okay, because this month is not The Month.  A few hours before I was planning on taking a test and having real hopes of seeing those two little lines, it was decided.  I’m not pregnant.

I really did accomplish a good bit in the last few weeks, though.  My shoes are finished, and the wood for my pattens is cut.  We didn’t have a drill bit small enough to predrill the holes for the tacks I’d hoped to use, and they looked like they were going to be too short to hold the leather tightly to the wood anyway.  I made a new, smaller veil from muslin and liked its drape immensely, so I’ll eventually make one from fine linen when I can get my hands on any.  I gave up for the time being on perfecting my stocking pattern and made a pair in a soft yellow linen-cotten blend.  They’re a little too big in the foot, so the fabric folds a bit just behind my heel.  I’ll fix that before I make another pair, but they’re certainly functional.  I also made a sleeveless shift from muslin, which eventually I’ll copy into linen.  For now, though, muslin works just fine for my skin layer.

I learned a new way of doing the broad round fingerloop braid and a broad lace of five bowes at the collegium.  Squee!  I’m hoping that will set me on the right track to some of the others I have printed from fingerloop.org.  Since the chirurgeons who were supposed to be at the event didn’t show up (again), I spent the day playing with my new drop spindle.  For less than a dollar’s worth of dowel and hook and some leftover wood from my pattens, the thing works like a dream.  I spun three little balls of my own short-staple white wool, which ended up relatively thick but very soft, and a ball of beautifully colored grey/brown mix that Ed had with him.  It was a longer staple, which I couldn’t handle when I first tried at the fiber get-together over the winter, but which allowed me to spin a very fine thread during court at the collegium.  I’ve been looking around to see if I can get any wool locally, but due to the area’s refusal to put anything online, I’ve had no luck.  Maybe 4H would know, but I think I’ll just go to the Sheep & Wool festival on May 3 instead.

I’m working on garden plans.  I’d like to have a small raised-bed herb garden finally in place this year.  All but two of my planters have cracked, including all the pretty ones.  The chives don’t seem to care and have sprung back up regardless.  Several people have offered me cuttings, and even strawberry, onion, garlic, and potato sets from Eadric, so I need a place to put them.  Starting my seedlings and hopefully getting some building done are my weekend goals, along with a compost bin.  So exciting!  I’m still in my scheming phase–more coming soon on possibilities and likelihoods.