Greetings from the Mesa
The first black chinned hummer arrived on the 11th. There’s been about 1/d migrating through taking breaks at our feeders. The summer residents haven’t arrived yet. The asparagus bed is popping. We had our first meal of them this morning. Yes, you can grow asparagus in the high desert! The bed is at the base of the greenhouse on the north side. It is a deep bed that is heavily mulched with straw and receives plentiful moisture from rain runoff. Also go man going is the rhubarb patch! Excited to have some tasty rhubarb treats soon. KP is picking up some locally produced compost and will start the summer veggies for the greenhouse this week. Our first starts are going, but some have been stunted by fungus gnats. It’s been too cold to move the starts out to the greenhouse just yet. Soon! In very exciting news our indoor Yuzu tree has thumbnail sized fruit on it. It’s a really cool plant with extremely long evil spines.
Tongy is stable and improving slowly. He is far less wobbly. He is going for a checkup with the local vet later in the month. Hopefully we can figure out what is going on. For now he seems comfy, and actually trotted down the hall and played a little with his favorite ball yesterday. He’s getting lots of love and cozy.
Curiosities
- In my quest to degoogle/ms/adobe I’m still looking for a decent sub for Photoshop. I’m going to try Krita next. I do have gimp installed but it seems so clunky. Maybe I need to give it more time. Here’s a good compilation of Free apps you can use to sub for Creative Cloud apps. I like kdenlive as a sub for Premiere. Libreoffice is the way to go if you need to drop MS Office. If you need a different more privacy oriented web browser I have been using Vivaldi on my phone and really enjoy it.
- Flare Family is an awesome online resource for RA family and patients put together by a woman with RA. Great design, and really useful information. If you are or know someone who has RA point them here!
- We’ve successfully used this high-elevation baking calculator to bake two cakes recently. For most baked goods I only add more baking time, and liquid. But cakes are another story. Using the calculator we finally made two cakes with no sinking middle and perfect crumb. Yay.
- Yes, blogging is still alive!
- WorldwideSidewalkJoy – adding whimsy to neighborhoods one installation at a time. Find your local free libraries on this worldwide map. Love it.
- Bonus: the incredible pencil renderings of Pejac on graph paper. My favorite is “Mind Trip”!
Consuming
Currently Reading: The Drawing of the Three, I Saw the Sky Catch Fire. Reading has really slowed down this month.
TV/Movies: The Persians: A History of Iran (BBC) really interesting! Adding the Shahnameh to my reading list. Also glad to be back in Hacks world.
Music: The Aadams Jacobs collection at the Internet Archive. He went to a bunch of shows in Chicago, and recorded them – what a treasure trove! Digging the Sugarcubes shows right now.