On star-lings.

Rainclouds cling to the mountain sides, hanging over us like a massive, suffocating mess of unprocessed felt. Warmth of the spring isn’t too keen on getting here just yet, but the grass is already reaching up, sending green spears, that summarily turn unsightly tan slopes into unsightly tan slopes with a vague sheen of a more interesting color. The overall effect is a vomit-green with sore orange patches, where the clay-laden soil shows through.

The little speckled bastards don’t mind, and descend upon these same mountain sides in a flurry of black wings and gnashing beaks. White specks on their plumage are surely why they are named ‘star-lings’, European Starlings, to be exact, an invasive specie in the Americas and another sign that spring is, indeed, upon us.

“Skvoretz” is what a starling is called in Russian; “skvortzy” in plural, a name that is fitting to the unholy squawks that pass for starling language. The batch which occasionally frequents our back yard is quite intent on showing the world just how verbal they can be. The chirps and squeaks resemble anything from a dying cat to a very creaky door, slammed over an over by an enthusiastic poltergeist.

On occasion, an uppity male might decide that that isn’t enough, and would impose himself onto one of the surrounding trees, to perform the horrifying solo, punctuated by an ecstatic flapping of wings. Yes, sir. As if we can’t tell where you are by your (rather melodious, truth be told) creaks alone.


Plants

African violets continue to bloom. Not a white one among them.



I’m seriously contemplating on getting a named one from a breeder, probably Lyndon Lyon greenhouses. Maybe, Easter Angel- a standard, though that’s not exactly pure white. Or even Winter Smiles, which is a white Russian variety.. Both of these are going to be rather large plants, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that quantity=/=quality. Might as well get the big, pretty ones that I’d enjoy, rather than three mini-sized ones, which I’d have difficulty keeping watered. (Never did get a hang of the wick-watering trick).


Repotted the non-variegated hoya and the odd oak, which sprouted in a cactus pot from an acorn which I’ve apparently put there and forgotten about. Maybe this means that I should be watering the cactus in question less?

Tales of Daon, Fini.

We went to Johnson city this past weekend, again. Despite the somewhat rainy weather and sightings of dead deer with a complimentary ring of ravens, the trip was enjoyable. There was much browsing of all-and-any-stores-that-had-plants-in-them, along with Michael’s and one of those “all natural” food stores.

The stuff in that type of grocery stores tends to be exceptionally overpriced, but, hey, where else are you going to get dried mango and cranberries?


Crocheting

Picked up another skein of silky-blue stuff, and am continuing on a small scarf with a somewhat simplistic pattern.


Here goes another uneventful post.



Painting

Finished “Tales of Daon”. 8x11 inches, gouache paint on board. It turned out to be a bit dark, since the background wasn't white.. Also, ran across some thicker paper at Michael’s and will be illustrating one of the poems on that same subject. Hooray for speculative fiction.

The blah-ness of too much art.

Due to the amount of outing time (it's been a rather nice week, weather-wise) and progress on "Tales of Daon", aka "Growth #3", I've fallen behind on the readings. Thus, to compensate for an overlong post about all things natural, here's a super-short one.


The Stranger Beside Me
By Ann Rule

AKA
"The nice young men I thought I knew"
or
"This is the trial that never ends,
It goes on and on, my friends.."

Summary: A true account by a woman who knew Ted Bundy before he was accused with a rather large number of murders. This book covers Ann's personal interactions and correspondences, as well as the details of Ted's trial(s) and appeal(s).

Rating: Read if really, really bored. Or interested in serial killers.

Don't take me wrong, this is an interesting book about a sociopath. It is also a documentary-style book, which means an enormous listing of everyones' names, and an excruciatingly long tale of the guy's trial. Since Errant's always had difficulty remembering names and is used to the fictional style of -resolution- (or, at least, science writing's style of -explanation-), this book was mildly difficult for her to read.

It did make me want to read more about the natural chameleons of human world, but not so much about Ted Bundy. (Though "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy" by Elizabeth Kendall is tempting.)


Currently reading:


"World without end" - on disk 9. So far, so good!

"Scratch Beginnings" - Wow. Just... wow. Glowing review, coming up. A must-read companion to "Nickel and Dimed".

The planter LIIIIIVES!

The house sits alongside Main street, a white, peeling construction from the first half of 20th century. It is enclosed by a natural fence of yews, once bushes, now trees; it stares with unseen, curtained eyes into the dull shade of its guardian oaks.

There is a dozen houses like this one throughout Abingdon, some of which have been abandoned and shuttered up, and some of which still function as bed-and-breakfasts, or even modern ghost-castles for retired recluses. What makes this particular house different from all the rest is purple.

Purple.

We thought we were hallucinating, the first time we drove by it. The entire lawn was covered in seamless carpet of crocuses, a fuzzy blanket of petals. The effect was absolutely stunning.


Elrin's project

The planter is done! The construction has been filled with top soil, compost (about 6$) and 26 bulb flowers (2 containers, one of white-edged red tulips, and one of mixed tulips, daffodils and hyacinths; would have been 10$ ea., but I've gotten 5$ off the tulips, since their pot was broken). Yay for bargaining!



I've of a firm opinion that 4 screws on either end (total) is -not- enough to hold the thing together, and that it will warp/pop apart/explode after the next rain.

Elrin remains stoutly optimistic.



Hiking

The hiking over the weekend (mostly in Sugar Hollow park, but some downtown Abingdon, too) brought sightings of additional plants (deadnettle and bitter cress, according to Gardenweb folks). Brownie points for guessing which is which.



Hint: deadnettle leaves look a bit like regular nettle ones.




Since a major warm spell’s been upon us, ground’s been unthawing, and, in some places, forming this interesting patchwork of vertical ice crystals. They fall over if you poke at them, creating a sort of fur effect.



This is what a chunk of the stuff looks like, atop a glove..




Plants

African violets continue to bloom. Sadly, none of them are what you'd call 'pure white'. Also, a leaf of curly purple-green one finally decided to grace the world with some babies. This time around, there's actually more than one of them.



Non-variegated spider plant (grown from seed, thank you very much) has decided to send off a single off-shoot, which ended in a tuft of flower buds rather than little green plantlet. The plantlet might develop later on, but even if it does not, I'd have found this tuft of flowers interesting by comparison.

Potted grape hyacinths are about spent; if weather will continue on being as warm as it's been this weekend, they're going outside with the rest of the bulb flowers.

The mosaic plant (a 1.50$ purchase from the clearance shelf at Lowe's) may be in serious need for repotting, as are 3 out of 4 seed-grown lemons. ... and then there are individual growths of some sort of sedum and a few Russian cactus off-shoots, that really need their own containers...

Russia has no cacti, you say?

Well, no.

Therein lies a story.

(Third person point of view starts here.)

In the pre-9/11 days, little Errant brought to the US of A three cactus babies from a potted plant that's been in her family for something like 20 years. The first one she stuck in a pot and proceeded to drag around with her to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and, just now, Virginia. The other two went to Err's mom, to live contentedly in a single pot, and grow fat'n'happy.

The first Russian cactus (labeled as Jeremy and Lawrence at different times, for humor's sake) has been sunburnt, beaded, rubbed against by a variety of cats, and, once, dropped. Its longevity through times of trouble is an inspiration to us all. Or to Err, anyway.

(Third person point of view ends here.)

Hereafter referred to as Lawremy, the cactus has stubbornly refused to bloom, despite its large size. Instead, it insisted on asexually propagating at an alarming speed, while occasionally shooting off an extra rib from the top. If the house was burning down and I had to rush in to save any single plant, Lawremy would be it.

Others would've included the aloe, parent-plant of which was originally saved from a frigid ceramics studio during boarding school days, a kalanchoe (mother of millions), gotten in my first-ever horticulture class, and a variegated dwarf sansevieria, which was a product of a friendship with a graduate student in the horticulture department back in the university days.

After all, potted plants with stories to them are just that much more special.


Birds

White crowned/throated sparrows have been all but replaced by song sparrows in the adjacent bushes. I hope some of the latter end up nesting in viewing distance..



Monday morning, we've also got a chance to hear a rather odd blue jay vocalization: a sort of two-toned call, rather loud and shrill. The call was repeated a few times, as the bird hopped from branch to branch. Not sure what that was all about.

But Tuesday was a –real- treat. A red-breasted woodpecker on the feeder! You know something exciting is spotted, when Elrin interrupts scone-making with a “ComeherecomeherecomeherecomehereFAST” in a low, urgent tone of voice.

Scarves, and painting, and dancing.

Whew!
Okay.
It’s almost 10 o’clock on a Saturday evening, I’m dead on my feet, and this is going to be short and sweet.

Crocheting

Finished the scarf, as seen in the adjacent picture. The pattern did not exactly turn out evenly, but life goes on and I’m going to wear it anyway! Also started another scarf, not quite as wide and with an actual manual pattern, out of silky yarn.


Elrin’s project

This morning, we had a long debate on where a TV should go, should we get a TV. The debate (which continued over lunch prep, lunch, and bath) somehow ended up with us in the back yard, looking over the slope.

The slope with its satellite dishes and sparse grass is, frankly, an eye-sore. There isn’t much we can do about it due to a stipulation in the lease. Elrin would absolutely love to extend the back patio, though, and I’d absolutely love to terrace the slope, and stick in an obnoxious amount of plants. Since neither is happening, we promptly turned our attention to the front yard (can you call a 2x6 feet of gravelly space and parking spots a ‘yard’?).

The front yard is going to be the scene of the first ever Errand-and-Elrin container garden, and, since it was an absolutely gorgeous day out (sunny, in the 50s), we went ahead and measured everything. And went to Lowe’s. Because, you know, one just opened across town, and they had such nice planters.

After looking at their wooden planter boxes and realizing that 70$ is a bit steep, we’ve decided to go ahead and make our own. Apparently, sitting for an hour on the floor of Lowe’s next to the craft woods and spiritedly debating construction of a planter box (a debate complete with visual aides, which didn’t always stay upright for long) makes you invisible to any of Lowe’s personnel. Never knew that.

Planter which will hold together for a year- 70$
Materials for a planter which may, or may not, do the above- 38$
Sneaking off to stare at potted plants for sale- Priceless


Painting

Started on another stylized painting. Gouache on board, roughly 8x10 inches. It’s taking forever, but with World Without End on tape (recently checked out from the library), there’s at least scenes of violence and carnage to go with it!



Dancing

Yup. Mina brought up a certain contra dancing event that happens twice monthly, and we went. They had a waltzing workshop beforehand, too. Danced for 2 and a half hours. Had an awesome time, and screwed up too many times to count. Definitely going back there again.

There was maybe 70-80 people there when we left, and we merely stayed there for half of it.

This is the place that organizes the stuff.

The creepy novel-reading continues.

The Turn of the Screw
By Henry James

AKA

“Too many words, not enough creepiness”
Or
“There’s a Freudian moral in there somewhere”

Summary: A young woman comes in as a governess into a country house, stocked with quite a few servants and two adorable young children. The conditions of her job are somewhat peculiar. And then there are ghosts.

Rating: Read only if you happen to have a good attention span for late 19th century writing.

Here’s a little admission: I’ve little patience for a lot of older ‘classical’ writings, and could barely get through half of James Joyce’s Ulysses; even Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, read for a book club, was a teary-eyed bore. It’s not about the language, I love the language with its twists and turns, its cascades of meaning . It’s that things are written for –no particular reason-, and you can almost feel these guys writing things down, just to see themselves write. Maybe if I was literature major or had additional knowledge of the writings of the period, my understanding of this book would’ve been different. Or if I had an attention span of something other than a chipmunk riding the wave of sugar rush.

Sadly, this is not the case. Turn of the Screw was somewhat of a disappointment, primarily because it was not creepy at all, for a ghost story that it was supposed to be. (Though it did have a ghost, or, rather, two, and it most certainly had a linear narrative of a story, so one can’t blame it for lack of everything.) Screw could’ve been creepy, and probably was, to a certain audience some 80 years ago. Yet the sheer amount of words dissolved any kind of suspense to the young people of today, and agonizings of a main character (female) present themselves as just.. oh, I don’t know. Bland?

Why do guys insist in writing up stories from the first person point of view, with female protagonists? WHY? Show me one book in which a guy actually does this convincingly. Hint: having the character refer to themselves as “members of inferior sex” in their head is not convincing.

I do realize that womens’ liberation was but a vague smear on the horizon at the time this was written. The rant above is there because I’ve got a license.

That’s right.

A recreational outrage license.

It is a complimentary supplement to the age of 20 and above.

To be fair, the novelette did have a rather adoringly creepy pair of small children, which makes one wonder why, exactly, children are so darn creepy. Mini-us, running around with malicious thoughts in their little blonde heads..


The Little Stranger
By Sarah Waters
AKA

“The haunting of Hundreds Hall”
Or
“Ss s Sss ss su suu Sukey”

Summary: Shortly after the second world war, a doctor befriends a local genteel family, in their decaying house. There are no ghosts, but a fair amount of interesting events, and in some parts, this novel reads like a love story.

Rating: Read if bored, bordering on a must-read for horror novel lovers.

This book was refreshing, because it was actually scary in certain parts. It also made me get up, go to the next room to get a pillow, place the pillow on the desk, and subsequently bang my head on the said padded desk, because it took forever to get to those parts.

Like House of Leaves, the Little Stranger makes a good use of non-standard text to emphasize the creepiness. Unlike House of Leaves, it does not go overboard with text formatting. Also unlike House of Leaves, it is a book about class and passage of time as much as it is about poltergeists. In some places, the latter seems tucked-on.

Stranger’s got a lot in common with Haunting of Hill House as well, successfully describing the setting to emphasize the emotional impact of the strange things that go within it.

As mentioned above, I dislike people pulling main characters of opposite gender, and this book only goes to show that there is no double-standard, as the shoddiness goes both ways. Or maybe I’ve got a problem with male characters who come across as too empathetic. Who knows!



Still in progress:
The Pillars of the Earth
By Ken Follett
Read by: John Lee

Rating: Falling from a “must-read” to “must-read if you’ve got lots of time on your hands”.

Currently am on disk 26 out of 32. The story seriously needs more supporting characters, at this point. There’s been a few other graphic sexual scenes, but one finds that one gets used to them. Still, the author manages to pull new plot twists out of his pants and keep it interesting.

No white AVs? I blame you, Mother Nature!

Mother Nature’s gone on her monthlies (centuries’ses?). Earthquakes in Haiti, earthquakes in Chile, one massive, continuous snowstorm over east coast of the US… Dear Mother Nature, please think of the birds. They have to live on this planet too, it’s not just us people. Granted, I don’t see how earthquakes might have an effect on birds, except for maybe disturb their nesting sites. But the thaw->freeze->thaw->freeze->2 inches of snow->thaw->etc cycle isn’t good for wildlife.

Black-capped chickadees are telling this to us by emptying the second feeder of its sunflower seed load in under 4 days. It is possible that chickadees may just be sneaking the seeds off to hide them in cracks of bark (similar to bluejays and woodpeckers at my grandmothers’ feeder in the midwest. She must be going through a pound of nuts a week for those avian thieves.), but I’m going to go out on a limb and blame their resourcefulness on global coo..warming.


Plants



African violets are still in bloom, and I’m afraid that the mystery-violet grown from the leaves gotten through a plant trade will turn out to be solid purple, after all. There goes Errant’s long-standing dream of a mostly-white violet.

While the conjunction of the words “white” and “violet” may seem nonsensical, this is actually far from the case. African Violet (AV) hybridizers have developed literally thousands of varieties, and their work continues around the world (or, at least, in US and Russia. Though when I was growing up in the latter, all –we- had were several pots of solid purple ones, which faded from the scene shortly after a power outage in the middle of the winter).

Colors of AV vary enormously, from trademark purple, to white, green, pink, light blue and red, with yellow making an occasional much-discussed appearance. There is also an AV society of America, which has a website with a good photo library. I’ve long thought of actually going to an AV convention, and there –was- one in Virginia sometime last November, but in the end, the date disappeared under a pile of other concerns and things to do. That’s life, I guess.
http://www.avsa.org/

For me, AVs have been a challenge (though flowers make it all worth it): they’re somewhat finicky in terms of preferred level of light, and it’s very easy to under/overwater them due to the size of their containers. Water on the leaves spots them, and preferred growth medium is what you’d call ‘soilless soil’, aka peat/vermiculite/perilite at a ratio of 1:1:1. This soil ratio is not sold commercially outside spring/sprouting season, so the rest of the year you’re stuck hunting down the ingredients, and mixing the stuff yourself.

For some time, I’ve used this mix for all of my potted plants with exception of cacti, with mixed results. Spider plants absolutely adore it, but need to be kept an eye on, because they do dry easily. Kalanchoes (both mother of millions and chandelier plant) did well, too. Begonia absolutely hated it, and grown-from-seed lemon are still undecided. The dislike on begonia’s part may’ve been due to under-fertilization. I’ve been using a 7-7-7 fertilizer for most all plants, but have now reformed and mixed a batch of 24-8-16 for everything but the violets. With soilless media, you’re the only source of nutrients that the plant has access to, which means that 99% of the time, you’re watering with very diluted plant food.


Birds

Robins continue to stalk the neighborhood, glaring from under cars and behind buildings. A number of hawks has been sighted, majestically gliding above the highway, or balancing precariously on telephone wires. Outside our windows, song and white-crowned* sparrows seem content to raid feeders and start up ungodly cacophony of “I’m hawt!” and “Your place, or mine!?” sort earlier and earlier every morning.

There was (what I suspect is) an eastern phoebe in the back yard a few days back.. identifying a new specie is refreshing, to say the least.





*I’ve yet to determine if these are white-crowned or white-throated. The birds definitely have the white throat, but not the yellow spot that would identify them as white-throated. Will try to get a better look and/or a picture this week.