Lunch, Phenology interior and exterior
Aug. 3rd, 2004 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanIt's so sticky today that I haven't turned off the air conditioner in my bedroom, and so cool that I haven't turned on the one in my office. It's raining in a desultory fashion.
This afternoon I had an appointment to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clindau at Natraj India Kitchen for lunch. I looked my bus route up on the Metro Transit website. I was unsurprised that the 23 was the bus of choice, but a bit puzzled to see that I was expected to get off at Lagoon and Fremont. There are several glitches in the Trip Planner system, though -- it doesn't recognize any address on Blaisdell south of 78th Street, for example -- so I just made a note that I should get the 12:11 bus, and didn't worry about it.
As I took my card out of the reader, Nate Bucklin came up the aisle to greet me. I went back and sat in the seat ahead of his and we had a wide-ranging conversation that caused me not to notice what the bus was doing. When he said that we had reached his stop, I looked up into a landscape familiar but unexpected. "Where ARE we?" I said. "Lake Street is coming up," said Nate, and then I realized that we were at Lake and Hennepin. You didn't use to be able to do that on the 23. I forgot that my instructions from Metro Transit indicated that the bus must loop back via Lagoon as far as Fremont, and leapt off the bus with Nate, who was telling me that they had, in fact, changed the route; bidding him a hurried goodbye, I charged down Lake Street to the restaurant.
clindau was there just before me. We've only met in person three times, but we never lack conversation. I got to hear about her adventures in taking the Guthrie's Othello on the road all over the country, and about the adventures of the Meno-jade, a piece of which she had brought me all the way from lblanchard in Philadelphia. She had to remind me twice to take it with me, but it did get safely home. We also discussed cats, London, the theater more generally, and my book and some of the fans of the previous ones.
I can't remember what I meant by "indoor phenology." Unlike most other people I know, we don't have ants. We had huge alarming flies, but I pursued them vigorously and they went away, at least the ones that I didn't smash did. I hate killing things, but there were too many flies to capture individually under glasses and release into the wild, and they roused a lot of atavistic antagonism in me, until I didn't kill one cleanly and felt awful about it.
Outside, we have gigantic doofy spotty robins and similarly spotty and gigantic bluejays. I know thatlaurel has been observing young robins for some time now, but mine only just showed up. I saw the first Monarch butterfly in my actual yard yesterday. A few days before that, I saw several damselflies disporting themselves in the again-uncut grass; and we have some white-faced meadowhawks working on the mosquito population in the side yard. Plants are starting to look a little ragged and discouraged. I have from time to time put in things that bloom in August and September, but the only one that ever thrives is the physostegia. It's making some buds, in a very leisurely and absent fashion, about as energetic as the rain.
Despitemrissa's sterling example, I didn't write anything while I was sick, and am having a bit of trouble picking up the threads again. Maybe if I cleaned my desk first. Since the reference books I used to write Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary are still on the shelf for "reference books for the book in progress," you can see that this is not just cat vacuuming.
Pamela
This afternoon I had an appointment to meet
clindau at Natraj India Kitchen for lunch. I looked my bus route up on the Metro Transit website. I was unsurprised that the 23 was the bus of choice, but a bit puzzled to see that I was expected to get off at Lagoon and Fremont. There are several glitches in the Trip Planner system, though -- it doesn't recognize any address on Blaisdell south of 78th Street, for example -- so I just made a note that I should get the 12:11 bus, and didn't worry about it.As I took my card out of the reader, Nate Bucklin came up the aisle to greet me. I went back and sat in the seat ahead of his and we had a wide-ranging conversation that caused me not to notice what the bus was doing. When he said that we had reached his stop, I looked up into a landscape familiar but unexpected. "Where ARE we?" I said. "Lake Street is coming up," said Nate, and then I realized that we were at Lake and Hennepin. You didn't use to be able to do that on the 23. I forgot that my instructions from Metro Transit indicated that the bus must loop back via Lagoon as far as Fremont, and leapt off the bus with Nate, who was telling me that they had, in fact, changed the route; bidding him a hurried goodbye, I charged down Lake Street to the restaurant.
clindau was there just before me. We've only met in person three times, but we never lack conversation. I got to hear about her adventures in taking the Guthrie's Othello on the road all over the country, and about the adventures of the Meno-jade, a piece of which she had brought me all the way from lblanchard in Philadelphia. She had to remind me twice to take it with me, but it did get safely home. We also discussed cats, London, the theater more generally, and my book and some of the fans of the previous ones.I can't remember what I meant by "indoor phenology." Unlike most other people I know, we don't have ants. We had huge alarming flies, but I pursued them vigorously and they went away, at least the ones that I didn't smash did. I hate killing things, but there were too many flies to capture individually under glasses and release into the wild, and they roused a lot of atavistic antagonism in me, until I didn't kill one cleanly and felt awful about it.
Outside, we have gigantic doofy spotty robins and similarly spotty and gigantic bluejays. I know that
laurel has been observing young robins for some time now, but mine only just showed up. I saw the first Monarch butterfly in my actual yard yesterday. A few days before that, I saw several damselflies disporting themselves in the again-uncut grass; and we have some white-faced meadowhawks working on the mosquito population in the side yard. Plants are starting to look a little ragged and discouraged. I have from time to time put in things that bloom in August and September, but the only one that ever thrives is the physostegia. It's making some buds, in a very leisurely and absent fashion, about as energetic as the rain.Despite
mrissa's sterling example, I didn't write anything while I was sick, and am having a bit of trouble picking up the threads again. Maybe if I cleaned my desk first. Since the reference books I used to write Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary are still on the shelf for "reference books for the book in progress," you can see that this is not just cat vacuuming.Pamela
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 01:30 pm (UTC)I got sick. I wrote. The doctor says I will feel cruddy probably 10 days, even though I won't be contagious that long.
So who is the sterling example here?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 02:00 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 03:26 pm (UTC)Cold-Eze is slightly different from zinc supplements, at least in how it affects me. The best is Zy-Cam, which you stick up your nose, but I was out.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-08-04 12:44 pm (UTC)Actually, they gave me their cold during the Mpls part of the run, so maybe I was pumped full of antibodies as well as zinc...
Cindy
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 01:44 pm (UTC)Mine, claimed during that Halloween trip - what, four years ago? Five? - when Joanna P. and I first met up with Laura, lived until very recently in a shot glass on my windowsill, nourished by nothing but air and (when I remembered it) water. I finally put it in a pot, and once it recovered from the shock of having actual dirt around its roots, it's doing very well.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 02:01 pm (UTC)Pamela
Yay! The Meno-Jade
Date: 2004-08-04 05:08 am (UTC)and about the adventures of the Meno-jade, a piece of which she had brought me all the way from [info]lblanchard in Philadelphia. She had to remind me twice to take it with me, but it did get safely home. .
Ask and ye shall receive. I asked the ether yesterday, as I was potting up all my Plant Rescue stuff from Michelle Cutner, whatever happened to the piece of meno jade destined for Pamela via Cindy. And lo, LiveJournal provides the answer!
And, Pat, I'm delighted to hear that you have finally given yours its own bit of earth. If Johnpalmer stops in to see us, and if he seems able/willing to bear more plants, I'd love to send you one of the rescues, perhaps a piece of that common blue German bearded iris that's your particular plant totem. You would then have a piece of Michelle Cutner history.
I've decided that hereafter, except for an occasional smattering of annual bedding plants, I will only grow Plants With Provenance.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 01:50 pm (UTC)Referring back to a post from a few days ago: I love your descriptions of your parkland adventures. I've been to Carver Park many times, but not in a bunch of years. I don't know what route you take to get there (probably highway 7 most of the way, I'd imagine), but sometime if the weather is right you should swing up through Mound on your way home from Carver (or visit on your way there) and check out my parents yard. Lots of daylilies, iris, hostas, wildflowers. It's right on county road 44 and is quite a sight (if I do say so as proud daughter of two obsessed gardeners). They're used to people stopping to admire the yard. Drop me an email sometime if you want directions.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 02:03 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure that they have to learn to remember that they can fly. Eric once happened on a cedar waxwing fledgling sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk, being passed by on either side by pedestrians, and it wasn't until he thought perhaps he should try to pick it up, since it might be ill, that it suddenly became galvanized and flew up into a bush.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 02:04 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 01:52 pm (UTC)sounds llike a lovely outing.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-04 03:17 pm (UTC)Pamela
we think the pigeons are fucking
Date: 2004-08-03 02:28 pm (UTC)K. [these are wood pigeons, and huge, not rock doves]
Re: we think the pigeons are fucking
Date: 2004-08-03 03:25 pm (UTC)And what do they eat?
Even here, goldfinches wait for the thistle to go to seed before nesting, so it's quite possible, I'd think, even if rather disconcerting.
Pamela
Re: we think the pigeons are fucking
Date: 2004-08-04 03:18 pm (UTC)Pamela
This has nothin' to do with anything, but...
Date: 2004-08-03 08:26 pm (UTC)(Oh, did you hear that I made Peg Kerr wonder about what Jane Austin would think of Godzilla?)
Re: This has nothin' to do with anything, but...
Date: 2004-08-05 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: This has nothin' to do with anything, but...
Date: 2004-08-05 09:04 pm (UTC)It is you, isn't it?
Pamela
Re: This has nothin' to do with anything, but...
Date: 2004-08-05 09:05 pm (UTC)Dragonflies don't look like books, so I'm relieved that they were not named by lunatics.
Pamela
Who dat who said who dat?
Date: 2004-08-13 05:47 am (UTC)I thought I sent you a post when I was up at my brother's farm last week, but the cows must have made me hallucinate - that or the cats, there were about a billion of them and a good number of tiny, just over six month old kittens that some how had avoided getting stepped on by the huge galumphing humans...
Anywho, my sister (an English/History teacher at a store front school in Winnipeg is teaching a unit on "The Future" next year. The kids have their choice of reading _The_Handmaid's_Tale_, _1984_, _Brave_New_World_, and something else. Any suggestions on other books? Have you ever read _Teg's_1994_? It's a responce to _1984_, and sometimes I think I have the only copy of it in the world.
Anyway, just curious.
Thanks.
Re: Who dat who said who dat?
Date: 2004-08-14 10:07 pm (UTC)Probably the cats discombobulated you. On the other hand, I don't have email enabled for LJ comments because it drove me crazy, so if you commented on some old entry I won't have seen it.
Hmmm, it kind of depends on what they mean by the future, and how old the kids are, maybe. All that stuff is more or less near future. I'd think NEUROMANCER would fit in there, and maybe a Heinlein juvenile or two, THE STAR BEAST perhaps, if it's desirable to demonstrate how visions of the future depend on the present. FAHRENHEIT 451 is unfortunately awfully timely. Something by Bujold would be good; the nearest in time to our time is FALLING FREE, but the writing is better in some of her later stuff. It depends on just what the teacher wants. Oh, I know -- Linda Nagata's LIMIT OF VISION or THE BOHR MAKER.
Pamela
Re: Who dat who said who dat?
Date: 2004-08-14 10:11 pm (UTC)I'll quit now.
Pamela
Re: Who dat who said who dat?
Date: 2004-08-16 08:58 am (UTC)I e-mailed her the other day, asking what the other book was she was using, and what she was wanting to achieve with the class. Here's what she wrote back:
_____
The other book is Walden Two (B. F. Skinner) and our goal is to contemplate different visions of the future, discuss our own ideas about (short and long term) future. Why are so many artists/authors facinated by the concept of "future"? Does it even exist?
_____
I should point out that when I was younger I used to sneak into her bedroom & read her Ray Bradbury collection...