I’m fantasizing about summer by compiling my summer reading list. I have a few books to read already but I especially like feminist scifi and that’s hard to find. So, here’s some research I did looking for it. One of my favorite feminist scifi/futuristic utopian books (The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk) isn’t listed on any of these lists.
April 18th, 2006
Iit’s spring! And so begins the garden and yard cycle of the year. We picked up a green house kit from Harbor Freight last fall and in putting it together have also begun planning a seating area closer to the garden.
I might talk more about garden planning later - or not … I’m also designing software to help with my garden planning (oh it will be so beta)
Gut also on my mind is what the heck to do with our awful 3-acre lawn? It’s mostly moss, and the grass dies back pretty quickly. By July, it’s 3 acres of dusty brown interspersed with dandelions. So, I’m thinking about investigating this idea of clover lawns. We’ll see how that works out.
March 31st, 2006
Last weekend I took some time off to do the things I said I was going to do this summer, none of which I did.
Most of which had something to do with Getting the Garage in Order. Not just for the sake of organization of course. It’s the last vestige of chaos from the chaos years. Full of unfinished and unstarted projects. A resting place for our personal collection of “I’m gonna’s”.
It’s also full of “things that might come in useful someday” and “things I wish I had once when I couldn’t afford it”.
Birthdays are a good marker for getting rid of cruft.
I’ve been collecting exotic wood for over a decade now. And I still don’t own a house to use it in the cabinetry. I’m not even sure I want to buy a house here. I don’t like the sprawling suburban development path that Olympia is careening down. I wonder … if quilting were true to tradition, what would a drunken sailor pattern look like for small towns that turn into suburban strip malls over night?
In any case, the garage…. The goal: to fit my 1954 Jeep Willys truck in there so I can get it in better working order by spring. Actually, I’d like to have it ready for paint by spring, but we’ll see. I had all kinds of aspirations for the now past summer.
So, I’ve been searching online for shop organization ideas, expecting to find a widget or tool, but alas only advertising for organization systems seems to be available.
September 29th, 2005
This is a cool idea - half of Washington is privately owned. In a practical sense, that makes habitat restoration more of a community opt-in project than a federally mandated one. So, the state of Washington offers grants of up to $50,000 for habitat restoration to private landowners. Now, of course a lot of those landowners are corporations like Weyerhauser, but I still think it’s a good incentive program.
Smaller grants are available too. I’m going to let our landlord know so we can get some help with the giant buckwheat (noxious Japanese Knotweed) that’s threatening our pond. While we’ve been cutting it down before it goes to seed, we don’t really have the means to properly excavate or poison it.
September 21st, 2005