On Friendship

I moved away from my hometown at an interesting age. I was 41. I didn't realize how established relationships/friendships are by that time, so here I am, five years later, without a social circle, which I've only just realized (for a variety of mundane reasons). How does one go about rebuilding a circle of friends at the age of 46?

Hell, let's just call it "New Music May"

A friend of mine in the UK is a total fiend for pop music, and occasionally hosts a drunken online DJ session. I have found more great new music through him in the last year than I did in the previous decade. I particularly like any in-your-face music that celebrates empowering people, which this one definitely does...

New Music Sunday

Enjoy!

DELETION

 So, I finally deactivated my facebook account. Sorry, Heather, I know it was one of the few ways that we kept in touch.

I really don't know what it was that finally drove me to do it.  There is just something so superficial and artificial about it.  Which is not to say that online stuff is universally bad--tonight I had a long online gchat with Laura, and it was awesome. 

But I don't like to be calm, and I don't like to accept things the way they are.  I will always struggle against the way things are, it seems.

If you haven't discovered MDK yet, you need to play that video. Be prepared to be watching her youtube videos for the next hour and a half if you do, though. And if you're in a bad mood and want to stay in that bad mood, then you'll be foiled. More soon!

Endless Horizons

I've been in a weird frame of mind lately.  What is it that drives us to do what we do?  Yesterday I woke up and I had no desire to engage the world at all, but today I was a total fiend for it all.  And tomorrow, who knows?

My kale and spinach and radishes have germinated and are growing.  I have them covered in hoop houses.  I go out there and lift the plastic and see the little things getting bigger, and it makes me happy.  And those garlics!  So much bigger today than this time last week.

I remember the smell of the greenhouse in my Swedish grandfather's greenhouse.  He used to go in there and go to sleep.  At the time (I was about 10) I thought it funny, but now it makes sense.  Were but that I could talk to him now, or even my father, given what I've learned in the last 35 years.

I'm not certain what I should do anymore.  "Helping friends" seems like a no-brainer.  But past that, I'm looking at the end of that paddle and wondering what it's pointing to.

A springtime ritual

Today I filled, amended, cleaned, half-planted, hooped, and covered the first of the raised garden beds for 2012. Radishes, arugula, asian spinach, and kale. The other half is for staggered plantings of the same. I found two wire worms, which quickly turned into wire-worm mush between my fingers (please don't tell PETA). Laura put this bed together for me last year, and she half-filled it with extra native dirt that I had lying around (the dirt ran out, hence the half-filling). So I bought several bags of organic topsoil and compost, and finished the job, along with some bonemeal and mineral goodness. Turn the entire thing with a garden fork, and then get into it with hands and elbows to even the mix, tossing out the stones... rake the whole thing flat, and then out with the 2" planting jig. Seed, water, put in the hoops and then clamp the plastic. That's a satisfying day!

Laura is now asking me to visit her and help her build some garden beds, which I think I should do. She worked hard to put together these beds for me, and to fill them as much as she could with the soil that I had on hand. So a road trip is in order.