Category / Bunberry

by Sixer

Skipping Ahead

I am sitting here by my window, watching the world awake. No passionate dawns today – just a warm, happy glow slowly intensifying into daytime. I have moved my furniture twice in the last thirty days. I liked where my desk was before, but I realized even though I could see the window from my chair, I couldn’t really see out the window. So I moved it to a better spot. But that threw my bed placement off a bit, ergo the second rearrangement. Now it’s all settled and I love it, which might not be a good thing. See, I’m already thinking ahead to next year and the changes and challenges I want to to take on. One of them is the dreaded Go Out More, so having a perfectly restlful house is going to make it harder. However, it will make my other goals a little easier. I’m still wanting to start sewing, for instance. But mostly, I’m wanting to start reading, and that’s where my planning has focused.

There are all kinds of reading challenges, but the ones that make the most sense to me are those that let me dig into my already overflowing shelves. For this reason I’m joining one of the many TBR (to be read) challenges.

I’m throwing caution to the wind and pledging 24. Mount Blanc. That’s two books a month. I think I’ve been averaging one every three month this year. To make things more interesting, I’m adding the color challenge in as well. Any ideas for a third one? There are lots of challenges out there, but most of them seem geared to a certain genre (mystery, sci-fi, romance, fairytales, etc.) and the books I’m drowning in right now are all non-fiction or plain fiction, so I need something more like the sewing or knitting challenges that people host, which go by theme (reminds you of spring, gifted, plaid . . . . ). Maybe I’ll follow one of those challenges, translated into books? Hmm, could you call Tonybee’s A Study of History foundational?

by Sixer

For the Win

They say a pictures’s worth a thousand words, but I rarely find that to be true. Oh sure, there’s Eduard Charlemont’s Harem Guard,but really, for a reader, can any image could be worth a thousand words? And if I feel that way from merely reading them – a passive stranger wandering around another’s carefully constructed world – how much more do I feel it 29 days later, after having written 50,000 of them?

Of course, a picture is a done and complete thing which I am not ashamed to share with you, and neither of these things can be said about the sorry mess of writing that has now earned the endearment of “my book.” Totaling over 100,000 poorly spelled and hastily chosen words, it is more like Frankenstein’s monster, half formed on the table, than anything else. The point of view shifts like the colors of the monster’s skin, from scene to scene and back again. And, more pressing from a critical standpoint, the plot drops in and out of sight like the float on a fishing line once the pike has gotten a hold of the hook. It’s rather embarrassing how pleased I am with it. Thank you everyone, for your encouragement to continue writing, and for giving me a place to gloat about it. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to present it whole and worth a thousand pictures.

by Sixer

Still Life

Deep down inside I should have known, Reader, that my next post would be one of wordy soliloquy, meandering slowly down the page, heavy and heady and yet monotonous. You’ll have noticed by now that I have not redone the colors of my blog. The font size, also, still needs to be fixed. However, through no effort of my own, I do have one visual improvement to share with you.

Bunny-eared Bento

It always strikes me as funny when someone one says “Excuse me for the phone photo.” I think most phones these days take better pictures than the last three cameras I had. And since it means I can let my idea of sketching photos and scanning them in slip silently away, stillborn, I find no need to apologize. This camera is enough for my needs – I’m looking forward to learning how to use it better. First thing to get used to will be the annoying lack of fiddly buttons. Is it a by product of being a rather wordy person that makes me think one stingy little button is not enough? Or is it just because I like the feeling of a manual zoom?

Angles are tasty

These bentos illustrate one of my on-going battles with photography, one I’ve had with every camera I’ve ever used. Proper color -– why is it so hard to achieve? And what’s up with these filter options? Three options for black and white, and three dedicated to different “vintage” “feels.” That leaves normal, saturated (called chrome), and faded. These choices confuse me a little, especially since the phone is obviously capable of, say, inverting the color (you can do it through the accessibility menu, but it applies the filter to the whole phone. Bummer). For these I’ve used iPhoto to add a little blue, which seems to bring the color closer to reality.

Oh, but the bento. These were for lunch and dinner on Tuesday. The top, lunch one, contains rice with red pepper and carrot confetti, all-season pickles, tamagoyaki, and sausage. And a lone umeboshi from the container I bought ages ago. Do these things ever go bad? I hope not, ’cause I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell the difference. The shredded veggies are really good refrigerator pickles, except I inevitably bought lettuce instead of cabbage. It doesn’t matter how old I am, for some reason my brain refuses to distinguish between these two, and I’m forever  buying one when I mean to buy the other. Can we chalk it up to poor facial recognition?

Pale yellow and black - photographer's nightmare.
As for the dinner bento, it is a study in subtlety, a sophisticated sort of bland. Rice, layered with polenta on one side and black olives on the other. I tried spicing things up, visually and otherwise, by adding more of the confetti as a heart. And, surprisingly, the mild flavors were pretty good warmed up. I’m starting to accept this polenta, though initially I thought it tasted vile. The recipe called for a cup of parmesan, and in my white bread world parmesan is the dry flakes you get from a plastic shaker.

Nothing is supposed to taste like a cup of spaghetti topping.

However, I do like the idea of polenta as a bento staple. Next time I’ll just leave the parmesan out. I’d also like to try it with grittier corn meal. All the recipes I looked at (all two of them) called for “medium grade” cornmeal, but my grocery store only had fine and not-fine. Nothing labeled medium. I think this fine is fine, but I’m betting the not-fine is what everyone else is recommending. Color me curious, I’m definitely planning on trying it out.

So that’s it. What?  You want to know how I’m taking photos on my phone? Sorry button-users, I’ve beens schooled. I know, I said with much tech came much sorrow, but my grandfather upgraded and I’m the oldest grandchild without a smart phone, so . . . . Well, who can say no to a camera with an incredible Japanese dictionary practically built right in? If it makes you feel better I’ve had it since Friday and still cannot receive texts or calls outside of Apple’s messaging App (so if you’ve tried to text me in the last few days, sorry!).

 

Sometimes it’s better to just work.

by Sixer

Play it Again

So, I got an email from someone yesterday in which they mentioned they were planning on starting a blog. “Oh,” I gushed back, “blogs are great places of inspiration and community!”

Ah,  irony.

If you can believe it, it wasn’t until I pressed send that I realized how silly that sounded coming from the girl whose blog has been nothing but a white page for the past six months. So I decided to knuckle down and tackle the beast. Only there was no beast. Whatever problem I had with WordPress, Startlogic, and the Universe in General has apparently been resolved while I wasn’t looking,  because everything came together as smoothly as oil and basil. I don’t even get any geek points this time around. {{1}} [[1]]Except, I changed my admin password through My SQL instead of the “forgot your password?” link – we have to keep our skills up somehow.[[1]]

You’ll notice that the theme has changed. Yes, this is 2014. I have given up Decollate for the moment, and will instead be making heavy changes to this theme.{{2}} [[2]] First to go: the horrid, witch-green accent color [[2]] Decollate never really worked, and the image I had for it has faded so much due to time and frustration that there are only shards of it left. Jumping into things is probably the only method that’s going to work for me, but I’ve spent enough time in the pool of theme creation to realize there is no water in it. Better to focus on the small cosmetic aberrations and leave the rest of my energy for actually writing posts. Novel concept, I know.

So, what can you expect from this blog’s future? Probably rambles and musings. I’m still without a camera, which leaves me with nothing but prose to offer. I have some updates for those interested in my Japanese studies and forays into gardening, so stayed tuned! I’m coming back (right after these messages).

 

by Sixer

The Dirt on 2014’s Garden Plans

There are four inches of snow blanketing my front patch of ground. right now. It’s piled on my stacking tower, making it look like a haphazardly delivered wedding cake. But strangely I am not able to enjoy it like usual. I am impatient for March and the first signs of Spring.

Last year I had a lot of plans for my little lot, but there were so many other things to work on that I could only put in a few things (the pot tower and the tomatoes). Now my family room is (mostly) done, and since I’m still deliberating over my bedroom plans, my garden gets my full attention. I have given myself a budget and carefully tried to map out my final goal. Of course, I have way more plans than can reasonably be attempted by a novice in one year, so I’m focusing on two things: blueberry bushes and herbs. I want a beautiful garden, but usefulness must be my first thought, and pleasure given my second. These two projects are, I think, the ones whose results will be most easily incorporated into my life (I noticed it was hard for me to get used to harvesting tomatoes,  hopefully herbs will come more naturally). Plus, they serve as stepping stones to my future, less practical, projects.

The jobs I’ve picked wil require two raised beds. One will go up against my house and end about a foot away from the already existing border of the front bed. This is where my blueberries will go. There red foliage in the autumn will, I think, complement the Japanese maple that’s planted in front of the window. In stage two I will add a level at the back of the bed for black pearls – a gorgeous, pepper plant which the Geekette and I saw at the gardens ages ago. We also saw hellebores, with which I am completely smitten. Those will go in front of the bed, and possibly snow drops, or some other early flowering flowers. This area tends to look pretty sad in the spring until the maple tree starts getting bed head.

The second bed will be on the other side of my door, stretching from my house to the sidewalk. The majority of my herbs will go in front, and I plan on making their box higher for easier harvesting (and to keep out dogs – we have a silk terrier living right next door who is very curious). Herbs that need shade can go in the lower middle section, where I’ll eventually be putting the more “ornamental” plants.

So that’s my plan for this year. I’ve already ordered my two blueberries (I wanted three, but in deference to their stated spacing preferences I’m starting with two), and am only waiting for the snow to melt before measuring my beds for a third time and buying wood. My blueberries will arrive the end of February and the beds need to be ready by then. Herbs will be started indoors in March, and transplanted mid-April (if the weather ever returns to normal, that is). But for now, in January, all I can do is dream.