Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

Gardening brings me joy. I’ve always grown herbs and when we moved into The Manor, added fruit. Over the past several years, I’ve branched out into vegetables and wild flowers.

For a long time I had a composter in a corner of the yard. I would chuck all our scraps into it, but never tended it very well (it didn’t get enough sun, I was bad about keeping the ratio of green to brown, &c.). It was a good way of keeping egg shells and carrot peels out of the trash, but I never got much compost from it.

Earlier this year, we joined the city food waste collection program. Because it’s composting on an industrial scale, we can actually send them any kind of food that would otherwise go into the garbage, not just fruit & veggie scraps. So, I decided to retire our composter. I dumped out the compost-ish stuff in the corner of the yard by the grape arbor, so I could clean the bin and offer it up on our local gardening swap group.

As I was planting the rest of my gardens in the spring, I noticed what looked like tomato plants sprouting up where the composter used to be. Before I knew it, there was a veritable thicket of tomato plants all tangled around each other, plus a pumpkin vine adding to the chaos. By the time I realized I ought to stake them or something, it was too late. It was a tomato jungle.

The plants are mostly creeping along the ground and there are so many green tomatoes.

Every morning I go out and walk around the gardens, checking on everything. Then I wade into the tomato wilds, looking for ripe or almost ripe tomatoes to pick and nestle into my little basket (which I made, of course). I feel like someone with free-range chickens, looking for where those darn hens laid their eggs this time.

They’re mostly little tomatoes, which makes sense. We tend to buy grape tomatoes, so that’s then main kind of seeds that would have ended up in the compost. However, I can see a few big ones lurking hither and yon. I’m hoping they ripen before it gets too cold, but there’s nothing wrong with fried green tomatoes!

There’s also a pumpkin! Of course it’s the one that’s growing wildly from seed that’s bigger and heartier than the one intentionally planted in my garden. This is an old picture from when it was just a feral baby pumpkin. Right now it’s big enough that I needed to support it by slipping it into an old stocking that’s tied to the fence, which doesn’t make for an aesthetic photo.

And just today I discovered what appear to be tomatillos…

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 19 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

I hope you’ve been having a lovely week! I have been, which was the inspiration for my tip (although the wording is from Scratch):

You are more than your job.

I took the week off from my day job. Not to go on vacation or even to do anything special. Not to spend extra time on my other work — B.A.B.E. or The BeauTease or my writing. Just to relax. Just to be.

I highly recommend it.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 20 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

I have a great fondness for horror movies of a certain type and I was beyond excited to learn that The Coolidge Corner Theatre was showing a double feature which included one of my favorites. And it was going to be in the woods. I immediately invited Devastasia.

Saturday evening we packed up chairs, pillows, and blankets, bug spray and folding fans, and of course, snacks, and set off for Rocky Woods, a property of the mysterious and ominously-named Trustees. In a clearing surrounded by trees with discrete up-lights we set up our modest encampment. Some people were actually camping and there were a couple of folks who had brought a futon couch.

The event was “Summer Sacrifice” and the movies on the bill were The Wicker Man and Midsommar. I’ve loved The Wicker Man since my high school physics teacher recommended it to me (along with several volumes of Arthurian literature — he could tell I was never going to be a scientist) and I had never seen Midsommar.

Because of who we are, we brought thematic snacks. Devastasia brought Scottish shortbread for The Wicker Man and goat cheese on rye crisps and Swedish Swimmers candy for Midsommar. I made The Devil’s Berries (strawberries with chocolate-horseradish cream), just because and Wicker Man-shaped peach hand pies (they should have been apple-filled to be really on point, but the apple crop failed… ;-).

As the sun went down the first movie started. There were bats flying overhead in the darkening sky and we were hardly bothered by mosquitos. The threatened rain held off and the heat diminished.

It was a lovely evening of ritual human sacrifice and I can’t think of a better person to have shared it with!

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 20 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

It’s Friday! How about a tip?

Follow up.

If you’ve contacted someone about performing or teaching or renting a venue and you don’t get a response, wait little while and then follow up. Unfortunately these days, sometimes people figure that no response is the same as a “no” (you would never do that, Dear Reader, right?), but sometimes people get busy, sometimes things slip through the cracks. 

It can’t hurt to (politely!) remind them of your interest.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 19 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.