What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I am saddened to report that something ate my melon seedling last night. * sigh * I'll plant one more, and then I'll give up on it for this year.

I finished the last of the paintings for this week! Yay! It is especially good, because tomorrow I go to see a doctor and wouldn't be able to paint (and they need to be done by Saturday). I got our laundry out nice and early into the washing machine, but then when it was done, it all smelled like solvent. So, I had to run it again. So much for getting the laundry hung up in time to dry completely. Oh, well. In good news, I finally cut out some netting and threw it over the garden, so hopefully that will keep the seedlings from being eaten. * crosses fingers * Oh, and I watered. Yay!

I'm having a lot of fun with the painting I'm working on. I worked more on the garden, although I have decided for the moment to not worry about finishing the (cardboard) path through the garden and just focusing on the stuff I have now. Otherwise, I'll have to start cutting back the privet hedge, which I want to get rid of, but which I want to use for basketweaving, and the pink jasmine, which isn't done blooming yet. I was going to only focus on putting in a few plants, and I should just do that. My goal for tomorrow is to finish up (or nearly finish up) the birthday card painting and plant new seeds in the garden to replace the ones that got washed away.

I planted three melon seeds, and there are three melon seeds sprouting, but of course, none of them are in the place I planted the melon seeds because of all the rain. Perhaps I'll relocate one of the melon sprouts to the right spot. I did a bunch of weeding today and have gotten it so that it is now possible to get all the way to the far end of the garden (which is shaped a bit like the prow of a ship). I think it won't rain tomorrow, so perhaps I'll put down some more of the cardboard "path". It is funny how much a path makes me more likely to walk through different sections of the garden. I look forward to getting the rest of the cardboard version put in.

So, knowing that I have a lot of trouble focusing on where I need to plant seeds, I decided to make a template out of cardboard. I had already figured out yesterday which plants would fit in the garden that I was planting today, so I took a big box, flattened it out, and then drew out the spacing for all the plants. I made decent sized openings to plant each group of seeds in, labeled everything, and cut slits all over the cardboard to let the water through. I put it in the garden, weighted it down with a rock, and then poured potting soil all over it. I moved the soil around so that it went down into the big holes then removed the excess. After that, I planted the seeds. It definitely worked for getting me to only put seeds in where I was supposed to put them. I'm not sure what it will do for weeds and how the plants will do in the long run. We'll see in a few months!

I spent the last two days getting everything much more organized. I had a question about what some of the side characters in the story that I am writing with Joel did with their time, and ended up spending a day and a half reorganizing our reference info so that I had an answer. The same thing with what many characters looked like. ChatGPT doesn't always work super well as a replacement for online character generators, so I decided to use DALL-E, which comes with my fancy ChatGPT upgrade, to generate images for the characters. I discovered quickly that it tends to make pictures of white people. If I wanted a person of color, I had to specifically ask for it. Sometimes, even if I asked for people with darker skin colors, it wouldn't give them to me. It also tends to make women very very skinny and men very muscular. (One trick to get it to be less awful is to start a new "thread", as you get more accurate results that way. If you want a woman with dark skin or is not skinny, definitely start a new thread. Also, if you want someone to have dark skin and the program refuses to give it to you, tell the program that they are African. I find this annoying, as the character isn't from Earth, so they aren't African, but that doesn't matter.)

With time passing and seasons changing, I've been feeling stressed about the garden. I need to get seeds planted, so that was the other think I worked on a lot. It helped. Yesterday, I planted some Portuguese collard greens and tomatoes inside in little cardboard pots. I had planned on planting the other seeds (okra, melon, and kohlrabi) outside today, but instead I decided to wait until the marigold and calendula seeds I ordered show up in the next few days. I think that when I am in Lisbon, I'll try to hit a store where I can buy some mixed wildflower seeds (not ones that have red flowers, though, because I think the contrast is too much for me, and thus I don't like them). If I had though of that earlier, I could have ordered them when I ordered the marigold and calendula seeds, but I didn't think about it until later. Anyway, the goal of having those seeds is that I can put them in all the other garden-y spaces to keep me from wanting to have something growing in there for a while. All that thinking about where to plant stuff really make me think about where I am going to put all the plants that produce vines that I want to grow. I want melons, cucumbers, zucchini, chayote, and winter squash. All of those work well when they climb a trellis, but where the heck would I put all these trellises?!? We are changing our plans a bit to accommodate this, but I think it will still work. I'm glad I made the effort to get this more organized.

I feel like I both have a lot going and not that much. I guess it is that the stuff I'm working on is mostly not things that I check off on my To Do list. Today, I worked on the solo roleplaying game again and got my first character made. I came up with a really dramatic background that is a good start to the game. The book that I am using for the solo game is okay but a bit confusing as the instructions aren't super clear about when I should be referring to the standard rule book for this game. That is made worse by the standard rule book that I'm using being a later edition (I assume) than the version that the author of the solo book was expecting, since character creation is handled really differently. I've figured it out enough, though, to get started. I will end up writing up a more organized version of the rules once I figure everything out. I can say that I am thinking about it much more like a story than a regular roleplaying game, in that I am thinking about "failures" as being elements that build dramatic tension rather than things that make you more likely to die.

Today, I also worked a bit on the website for organizing my garden and went out and worked with Joel on weeding (I've seen that gardening is considered exercise, so I'm doing it instead of walking on days when I don't have to walk someplace, since there is so much work to be done in the garden). Anyway, I'm still pleased with my day.

I tried making a basket out of reeds, but they are too floppy. So, I'm going to make these long, narrow baskets to fit in the niches up near the ceiling in the kitchen using the vines in our yard (and this pattern). I'm going to have to change the pattern to use vines instead of flat reeds (which aren't the same as the reed I was going to use), but I think it should be just fine. I'll probably make it just like the basket I just finished. If I get to the top, and it seems sturdy enough, then I'll just make it with one wall. Otherwise, I'll make it with two walls. The pink jasmine is just about to bloom here. If it doesn't smell good (the peach-colored ones that have the same leaves didn't smell good), then I will be happy to cut back those vines and use them for something. If the flowers smell nice, then I'll have to be a bit more careful.

Speaking of gardening, I have finally come up with some ideas for where to put things in the garden. Joel cut out the oleander (which will keep popping back up and we will keep cutting it back), and I think that spot will work for the peach tree. ChatGPT thinks that the toxicity of the oleander won't transfer to the peaches. Yay! I have also been trying to figure out where to plant the chayote/chuchu, as it is apparently quite prolific (and perennial). I had thought of planting it so that it would grow along the chainlink fence, but I'm worried that it will stick its vines up into the trees. However, we need some way to divide our "garden rooms" up, and having a really enthusiastic plant growing across the yard and over an entryway to a garden room would probably be really nice. So, I'm going to plan on that. It will need to be pruned a lot, but every part of it is edible, so I think that should be fine.

In other news, the contractor came and did more work on the waterproof stuff in our bathroom. Joel sanded all of it that wasn't screwed up last week, and he will sand the rest for me (except for any parts that seem damp) on Tuesday. Then, I will paint on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope. I really want this stuff to be done.

On Saturday, I went into Lisbon, as usual, and it was great. I had forgotten that I was also going into Lisbon on Sunday for roleplaying, which was decidedly less great, as I was tired. However, the roleplaying was great. (For those who are interested, we killed a bunch of bad guys. Then, we found a room with bad guys talking, which we were unsure about engaging with. Instead, we continued exploring and found a barred door. We opened the door, and there was a really dangerous monster (an owlbear). We ran back to the room with the two bad guys talking and charged in. The owlbear took out a couple of bad guys for us, before we finally had to fight it. So much fun!) Today, I was finishing upgrading all my websites to a newer version of PHP, when I found that one site wasn't working. Very long story short, the first level of tech support wasn't helpful, but I think I have proof that it is the hosting provider's fault that the site doesn't work. It was a lot of frustration on top of being very tired.

In happier news, we finally have homeowner's insurance. Yay!!! And the stove was delivered today. Yay!!! And Joel got the replacement bolts for his bike, so now the quick-release wheels and some other bits are no longer quick-release (so it is harder to just pop bits off and steal them). This is one step to Joel being able to lock up the bike somewhere for a longer period of time. We still aren't sure if I'll be able to ride on the back any distance. However, we'll see. I also spent some time pulling weeds in the garden today, so now I have two bits that were full of nettles that are no longer full of nettles. I really look forward to getting these things all pulled out and the trees I don't want removed. We also need to prune everything. In happy garden news, ChatGPT just told me that one of the plants I want to put in (chayote) is grown by sticking the whole vegetable into the ground and waiting for it to grow (Wikipedia seems to agree). That sounds much easier than trying to find a place that will sell us a small plant. Probably, I should wait until I have finished tearing all the ivy out, as chayote is a pretty aggressive vine, it seems, and I'll need to have some place for it to grow and be ready to cut it back. Luckily, every part of it is edible, so I can eat everything that I prune. Other good news is that most of our big vitamin delivery has arrived. Yay!

I am not feeling fantastic. However, I've gotten my period, so that could well be it. Also, I had a headache all day. It could also be the calcium. I have no idea. Since I had another nightmare last night (that smoothly transitioned into another nightmare) and had to get up in the middle of the night to eat an apple, I decided this evening to give into my desire to eat more than I should and have a fried lentil crisp. (I ground some red lentils, salt, and pepper in the coffee grinder (that is never used for coffee), added a little bit of water to make a batter, poured it onto a hot skillet with olive oil, and cooked it for a bit on both side. If I made it without the olive oil, it would obviously be much less greasy than it is, but I wanted something fried.) Anyway, the lentil crisp was absolutely delicious. Eventually, I should try cooking it like flatbread rather than frying it in oil. The extra lentils should be enough (hopefully) to stave off low-blood-sugar-fueled nightmares.

In better news, we played some Dungeons and Dragons today. I finished putting the varnish on my cake painting, which looks very nice. I also worked once again on trying to figure out what color the sky is. So far, I think my most accurate test is of cerulean blue mixed with purple. I can't tell right now, though, as I have to wait for sunlight to be sure. I plan on trying these colors out with a mixing white instead of titanium white to see what that does. I also will try painting the background purple and using a very thin wash of cerulean blue over top of that to see if it results in a more accurate color.

I've seen gardening journal books, where you write down what you planted, etc. Instead of using paper, which isn't really my thing, I'm considering making... a database! Surprise!

Oh, and it looks like my sleep is changing. My exercise watch thinks I'm getting more deep sleep. Last night, I also had disgusting nightmares, which I have regularly, and trouble sleeping, which I don't normally have. However, I luckily have Portuguese flashcards, which can overpower any insomnia.