My brain is pretty well fried-- I had today off, and spent it reading the novel I'm currently trying to finish writing. It's 140,000 words long and I know how it's going to end but I thought I should remind myself how it started and middled first, so, that sort of took the whole day and left me braindead. I've been trying to think what to do with myself this evening-- something that doesn't involve a lot of focused brainpower. Watching TV is right out, as we don't own one. And Z isn't entertaining me.
But then (e:kara) asked about gardening, and I thought: yes! I can always write about plants. :) Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long one.

So, I'm going to write The Things I've Learned In My Single Year Of Gardening In Buffalo. Anyone less experienced, I'm glad to share what I know: anyone more experienced, I'd love to hear what you know!

I live in a teeny little house near the border of North Buffalo and Tonawanda. It has a little yard that gets a reasonable amount of sun. Last year Z and I cut the sod and mixed in topsoil for a little garden in the back, and we just planted a few things and had fun. This year we might get more ambitious because it was so much fun. I like flowers, but Z is only interested if it's something he can eat, so if I want help I have to promise to plant food. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but he does love to eat. He really likes snow peas. There are worse addictions...

I append here a disclaimer: my mother is a wonderful gardener, who (when my sisters and I were little) used to grow much of our food at home. (It has been said jokingly for years that I am the weird one of the family because I was born at the end of a long hot summer Mom spent bent over doing gardening work, so I was upside-down the whole time.) She is a master of flowers, vegetables, and even forestry. But me? I was never interested at all in gardening until I'd moved several hundred miles away. So I sort of phone her up a lot, in a kind of panic: "When do I plant daffodils?" "Um, not now, honey."

Z's grandmother was also a great gardener. She was a farmer in Latvia before WWII, and passed on some of her knowledge to her two daughters. Now, Z's mom and aunt were both glad to give us advice when we wanted to start gardening here. But the thing with them is that they always contradict one another. Very politely, naturally, but also very thoroughly. Thing is, neither one is wrong.

And that's an important lesson to learn about gardening: there is almost always more than one way to do something right. And it's not rocket science. It's actually really hard to kill people doing it. It's also really hard to entirely fail at it. (e:imk2) had a good point (eventually:)) in the comments on the last post: it's easy to become convinced that it's more complicated than it is. It isn't. It's just a little bit of hard work now and then, and don't forget to water it sometimes if there's no rain. (*cough*lastfreakingsummer*cough*)

The bits of advice they gave me that have proven useful are as follows:
1) When preparing a new bed where grass has been growing, cut up and completely remove the sod. If you turn it under, it will mean you get a lot of weeds. Get rid of the part that's grass and grass-roots, and you'll have to do a lot less weeding later.
2) North Buffalo at least has soil that is very heavy with clay. Buy some topsoil and work it into the top few inches for best results. Also, don't try to grow carrots or onions in it.
3) NEVER plant MINT in your lawn or garden bed. It will spread like a mofo and is impossible to get rid of. Z's aunt knew a lady who sold her house just to finally get rid of the mint in her lawn. Plant it in a pot, for God's sake. (Chives will also spread, but if you cut the bottom out of a plastic pot, plant them in it, and stick that in your garden, they'll stay put reasonably. Mint, you'd need more drastic measures than that.)

I went a bit stir-crazy this winter and bought myself like $85 worth of seeds from Burpee.com. Burpee is a venerable old seed catalogue, and my mother has had nearly thirty years of good results from their seeds, so she recommended them. I can't really complain so far. Seed starting, however, is not exactly easy or predictable. I had a 99% failure rate for my strawberries and violas, roughly, but then I had a 99% success rate for my tomatoes, and I honestly couldn't tell you the difference except perhaps that the room was warmer for the tomatoes?

But I whiled away many a long dark hour this winter in making a gardening calendar. I wrote down the information for the seeds I'd bought (i.e. "plant after all danger of frost is past"), looked up the important climate dates (i.e. "average date of last frost") in the Farmer's Almanac and online, and worked out when to plant what. Then I took the hokey calendar Z got from the local church (featuring the kind of golden-glowy paintings of Jesus et.,-- this month it's The Empty Tomb), and I wrote what I was going to do each week on it. I think the little drawings of fish reminding me not to eat meat during Fridays in Lent really adds to the effect.

Mostly this was important for the seed starting. I bought a big 4' fluorescent fixture, some Gro-lite flourescent tubes, and a timer, and used the plastic tubs Wegman's sells olives in and poked holes in the bottom because those little black plastic six-packs are annoying. (And the lids make great saucers underneath, and you can see when the seedlings are becoming rootbound because the sides are clear! but it looks cheesy as hell to have a bunch of Mediterranean Olive Bar tubs sitting on your windowsill.)

Most of the dates for starting seeds are past-- tomatoes, for example, should be started like eight weeks before the date of last frost. The average date of last frost here is May 1st. But the guaranteed frost-free date is May 17th. The difference is simple-- while there isn't usually a frost after May 1, there has never been a frost after May 17th. Basically: Do you feel lucky? Do ya, punk?

For those clever enough to bypass the insanity of starting your own seeds, the fun is now just beginning. Head on down to the garden center (I love Sunview on Sheridan Blvd near Anderson's, because the owner is nutz but very sweet) and see what they've got for sale already. We're having an early spring this year, because the lake never froze. So this year, this is my planting schedule. (Note: when I say "plant" I mean "put the seed in the ground", and when I say "set out" I mean put the already-started seedling in the ground. Already-started seedlings perform best if they've been 'hardened off' prior to planting-- what that means is that you set them outside during the day for a couple of days and take them in at night, so they get used to the sun and wind and temperature. But a lot of garden-store seedlings are stored outside, so they're already hardened off. Your mileage may vary.)

SCHEDULE:
Last week I planted peas and snowpeas, because they can tolerate light frost (32-27 degrees F) and I'm gambling we won't have any more heavy frosts. I also planted lettuce, radishes, and beets, because they grow best in cool weather and again, I'm gambling it won't dip below 25 again. (If it does, I'll throw a blanket over the garden and hope for the best.)
I'm going to plant pansies as soon as I find some at a garden center, as I think they'll be all right in the light frosts this coming week as well. Maybe next week; my crocuses are pretty and I can wait. (Crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, and other bulbs should all be planted in the fall for spring blooms.)
Pansies are cool-weather flowers and do best in part-shade. I have a small bed on the north side of my sunporch that gets a lot of light (reflected from the white house next door) but little direct sun, and the pansies in that bed actually survived the hot dry summer and bloomed until well after the first frost. (Some of them seriously bloomed from April to November.)

May 1st I'm going to plant a second planting of peas (to extend their growing season), a second planting of radishes, and a second planting of lettuce.
May 7th I might set out my tomatoes if I'm feeling lucky. I'll also plant my beans.
May 14th I'll definitely set out my tomatoes. If it's warm, I'll set out my pepper plants (although I might wait another week for those-- they like warm soil). I'll also plant the seeds for my cucumbers. (I was too lazy to start those indoors.)
I also have some dill, parsley, and basil started. If I have time I'll plant those too.
May 21st I'll plant nasturtiums, gazania, zinneas, and morning glories. (They like warm soil so if it's chilly I'll wait a week.)
By May 28th the first planting of radishes will be ready to harvest.
By June 4th the peas might be starting to be ready to harvest.
By June 25th the beets might be ready for harvest.
July 9th might see some cucumbers and perhaps some beans.
July 16th might see some peppers ready to harvest.
And the tomatoes should be ready by August 1st.

But the harvest dates are merely conjecture.
I may also plant more lettuce and radishes toward the end of August, so I can get an early-autumn crop of those cool-weather plants before the first frost.

Exact science? Not so much. And I'm basing those dates entirely on my poor math skills and worse memory. I'm going to try to remember to update here when I actually *do* plant things, just to see how accurate my predictions were-- and maybe next year I'll have a better idea. (Last year I didn't really keep records at all, so I don't remember.)

Maybe this will give me an incentive to figure out how to post photos on this joint. I got pictchers of my pretty flowers already!

I am a transplant to Buffalo, having been born and raised in the eastern part of the state (east of Albany in the hamlet of Melrose in the little town of Schaghticoke, north of Troy in Rensselaer County, just to load you up with hard-to-spell words-- imagine my elementary school days). One thing about Buffalo that few people ever realize is that our lake effect means that we are actually much milder than the rest of the state. We are a USDA climate zone 6a. The rest of New York State ranges within zones 4 and 5.
("Zones" refer to plant hardiness. They're defined by the minimum and maximum temperatures reached in the region, and are used to indicate what plants will survive there and what won't.)

What this means is that I can grow all kinds of neat stuff my mom can't. Her garden, the beautiful culmination of 28 years in the same place (they own 50 acres on a secluded dead-end road overlooking the Hudson River, bordered largely by agricultural properties), is a marvel to behold, but ha! My crocuses have already bloomed and hers are only just opening, and my daffodils are about to bloom while hers haven't even come up.

And I'm totally going to have tomatoes before she does.

We sorta got gypped on winter this year, though.

How is it that adult humor is the most juvenile?
Heh heh heh.

So yesterday, (e:Zobar) and I are sitting at the dinner table, each discussing our sucky days at work, but good-naturedly, because, well, you know, things aren't that bad and also the food is good.
Z's drinking 100% grape juice, and reading the back of the bottle. "This says an 8-ounce glass is two servings of fruit," he says. "But I think it should be more than that. I mean, from 8 ounces of pure grape juice? You should get, like, two servings of fruit and a gold star."
I find this amusing, and begin considering giving people gold stars. I am feeling benevolent towards Z at this point, for reasons which will become clear as the story progresses. "We should give each other stars," I say.
"I dunno," he says. "What for?"
"Well," I say. "Let's see. I would give you:

• 1 star for the snuggles you gave me this morning
  
• 1 star for the sex, because that was nice too
  
• 1 star for making dinner because it's awesome
  
• and 2 stars for buying me Cadbury eggs on the way home because that involved remembering a conversation and extrapolating it into action which means a Bonus Star.

So that's five stars right there!"
He looks oddly wounded. "Don't I get any for doing all the dishes in the sink?"
I pause. I blink. "You did?"
He points. I look. The sink had been full of things like the wok and the grill pan and other non-dishwasherable things, left over from a rather ambitious dinner earlier in the week. I mean, full, like to the point that I tried to rinse out a milk glass and wound up breaking the thing.
Now it is not.
"Oh, honey," I say. "No, you don't get stars for that."
"I don't?"
"No," I say. "You get oral sex for that."


Some things are too important to fuck around with stickers.

I keep meaning to update this blog and I keep not doing it. Livejournal's the one I'm in the habit of updating. I did manage to add the RSS feed of (e:Zobar)'s journal to my LJ friendslist, but really I should've done one of the whole site. Put that on my list of Things To Do Once The Internet Isn't Broken.

Yes, the Internet's broken at my house.

Being the live-in girlfriend of an information technologist isn't all it's cracked up to be. Because, see, he leaves the house sometimes. And while he's out of the house, he's fixing broken things. When he comes home, after a long day of fixing broken things, he's astonishingly unreceptive to complaints about Yet More Shit That's Broken.

So I'm trying to Fix the Internet.

Now. You will know, if you've been following along, that I am not an IT specialist. I know just enough about computers that my mom makes me fix hers whenever I visit. This doesn't mean that my fixes make anything better. No. I am a writer and a waitress, and not terribly in tune with technology. (Answering machines make me stammer, television remote controls bewilder me, and I have on more than one occasion been reduced to tears by the Direct TV sattelite receiver at work's inscrutable refusal to "get the game up on the big teevee there". Bar customers are shockingly rude when you're too busy serving beers to indulge their television whims. But I digress.)

So. Armed with the knowledge of It Can't Be That Hard (Or They'd Have To Pay (e:Zobar) More, Right?), I went into where the router and modem sit. (On a milk crate on top of a disused bookshelf in (e:Zobar)'s room, for the curious.) I located their power adapters. I unplugged first the router, then the modem, and waited five seconds for each one to fully power down. I then plugged in the modem, and waited until all its blinky lights had gone back to being either blinky or steady as was appropriate. I then plugged in the router, and watched its self-check, and let its blinky lights go steady or blinky as desired. Right.

Internet still didn't work.

I made a pot of coffee, put in a load of laundry, wrote a Livejournal entry in a Word document since there was no Internet. Came back. Still no Internet.

So I did my I Feel So Effective power-cycling trick again.
Nothing.

I checked: (e:Zobar) didn't bring his phone to work. So I could text him and ask him to call me when he wasn't busy, but he'd get the text message sometime next week.

Finally I gave up. I'd been planning on doing a lot of research on various topics on the Internet today, to sort of reward myself: over the last two days, courtesy of my laptop, I've managed to write over 7,000 words on the novel I'm trying to complete. I worked diligently on Sunday in a slow shift at work, and yesterday on the bus, or waiting for the bus, etc.,-- all places with no Internet.
Perhaps, I thought, this is the Cosmos's way of saying to me that I should not take a break, but should continue writing at that pace. Because the Cosmos is sick of me whining that my book isn't done yet.

So I got out my laptop, and settled myself in a comfy, pillow-propped position (my laptop screen only works when held at certain angles, see, so pillows are helpful), and opened up my Word document, and was rereading the last few paragaphs when--

Wrngggng (i challenge you to spell that more logically)

iChat signed onto the Internet. The Internet: Fixed. Nugh!

I extricated myself from the pillows and ran back out to where my desktop is set up, to continue my Internet research. I opened half a dozen tabs in Firefox and was eagerly reading all the links I'd been dying to click when the Internet died. I was about halfway through when...

The Internet stopped responding again.

I have discovered that the only way to Fix Broke Things is to resign myself to their being broken.

Now that leaves me with only one question:
How do I fake resignedness? Because I really want to keep doing what I was doing on the Internet (researching publishing and agents, if you must know).

Sigh. *climbs back into bed with laptop*

This site keeps making noises I don't understand. I feel very codgery, sort of like standing on my lawn and shaking my stick at all the esoteric icons. "You dang printery lookin' thing, get off my lawn and tell me where the Update Journal button is!"

That said, I am very pleased by all the welcome comments and chats I've gotten. Please be advised, however, that I am an exceedingly disorganized person, which condition is sorely exacerbated by job stress and the fact that I'm in the final stages of completing a full manuscript for my second novel (the first one is in the back of a drawer awaiting editing). So I have about 3% of a brain at this point. So I kind of miss a lot of emails and comments and the such, here and at my livejournal, and this has given me this constant low-grade guilt that's taking up approximately a third of my remaining brain-- leaving me functioning at about two percent.

The novel's going swimmingly, though, when I'm not trapped at work by flight delays.

I logged on here partly to spy on (e:Zobar), of whom I have seen very little these last few days what with all the work that's been going on (for him and me), and partly because I had a mildly entertaining story from riding the bus.

I take the MTA's 30 bus to get to work some days, because Z & I have just one car between the two of us. (It's his car, legally, but I've paid for approximately half of it by now, as well as much of the insurance.) Z takes the bus many days as well, so don't go thinking I'm all self-sacrificing. I'm not. It's just that I've discovered that now that I have a laptop I can get a lot of writing done on the bus, and I'd rather spend that time writing than spend that time driving.

I digress. There are always things going on on the bus. I witness a lot more of life when I'm on the bus. It's sort of interesting because I interact with a different cross-section of society when I'm on the bus. The 30C goes from Vulcan to the University Station (at UB South) and thence to the airport via ECC, so I get a high proportion of people on their way to classes at one of the two universities, and also a lot of people who work in this weird little industrial park between ECC and the airport-- it seems to host some call centers and the like. There's also a nursing home in the middle of the route, so there are often nursing assistants riding the bus. Not a lot of crazies or drunks on that route.
All of which is immaterial to the story, but I'm setting the scene, I guess.

Yesterday on the way in I listened to a young woman inform her friend of where all the best jobs were. She mentioned the company I work for, and then mentioned a coworker I'm fond of by name and thoroughly ran her down. I was sitting there in my uniform, which gives you some idea of how perceptive this girl was. She then complained about how she'd been fired for such trivial reasons, and advised her friend to avoid that company. I relayed the incident once I was at work to the coworker in question, who laughed. "I remember her," she said. "She called (Supervisor) a fatass."
So there's your answer on that.

But. The amusing anecdote. (I was going to be succinct. I failed. I told you, this is only 2% of my brain, and the editing part is Busy, thanks very much.)

So I get on the 8:28 to go home after my shift. I am the only one that gets on at the airport. I usually sit in the back, but tonight I decide to stay near the front. I'm tired. So I'm sitting there, and we get to the weird little industrial park.

Three people get on, all three of at least nominally African descent, all apparently friends or at least acquaintances. The first one, a young woman, pays her fare and sits down near me. The second one, a still-younger woman, pays her fare, sees that the coveted back-of-the-back-of-the-bus bench is free, and says, "Come on! Let's sit in the back!"
The sitting girl says, "Rosa Parks DIED so we wouldn't have to sit in the back of the bus!"

I thought that was really funny. The group merrily corrected her, and they eventually concluded that Parks's noble sacrifice was so that they could have a choice of where to sit, and thus they all went to the back and had a grand old time for the 40 minutes it took us to get to University Station.