Posts by Amy Gale
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Courgettes work well for most gardens, I think. The main problem is that, being green, they are nicely camouflaged. It's one thing to intend to catch them all early but quite another to actually accomplish it. The best advice I have gotten in this area was from my mum, who advocates picking every one you see, no matter how small. It works well. The tiny ones are delicious, and once eaten cannot later contrive to repeatedly escape your notice while growing to ludicrous proportions.
I did peas in (big) containers this year, against a sunny wall, with lettuce planted around them. They may be a bit easier to isolate from infection that way, although I can't honestly say that my thought process was any more sophisticated than "hmm, there is no room for peas in the main veggie bed."
Our winters are too cold for a lemon tree, to my eternal disappointment. Everyone who knows me is probably sick of hearing me complain about the price of lemons and how much nicer it is when you live in a climate where you can have a tree and it's all so much better in the Old Country etc etc. I use bottled juice and oil 99% of the time. My nana would be ashamed.
-
One of the particularly satisfying aspects of having your own garden at your own place is being able to plant things that take several years to settle in and start producing.
I'm loving my rhubarb and my asparagus. The asparagus is still gigantically ferny as the frosts move in for winter; the rhubarb has died back for the duration but come spring will doubtless start producing maniacally again. They are at one side of the bed, so are not disturbed when the other side undergoes its annual reconfiguration.
I run a strict "if you need too much special attention, it's not going to work out for us" regime. I'm perfectly happy to pinch back shoots and stomp on Japanese beetles and so forth, but if a plant is going to die because it didn't get something special [*] applied, we were never meant to be.
[*] Including water, frankly. Containers excepted, since that's clearly on me. -
Oh, I'm paranoid, I just have a strict ordering on the subjects of paranoia. In which "my purse is stolen with my paperwork in so I have no paperwork and eventually this is discovered and I get detained indefinitely" > "my paperwork is at home and I get randomly stopped and I don't have it on me so I get detained indefinitely".
-
Up Front: That's Inappropriate!, in reply to Danielle,
the chap behind the desk told us that we should carry not only our passports, but also our Social Security cards with us at all times while travelling, because they were requiring actual proof of your Social Security Number for various things.
My reaction to this is the same as to the requirement that I carry my immigration paper work at all times: no WAY are the most important pieces of paper in my life leaving their safe homes except when absolutely necessary. The odds of being randomly stopped and thrown in gitmo for not having my approval notices in my purse are way the hell lower than the odds of having said purse stolen. Touch wood. Touch wood touch wood touch wood.
-
I don't even understand how my ancestral peeps survived in the fetid swamps of Louisiana, to be honest. Alligators, giant flying cockroaches and one thousand percent humidity. What an appealing prospect.
Seriously. Every winter I wonder why on earth anyone settled here in the first place. In their shoes I'd be hiking south as fast as I could.
The environment control thing really has to be seen to be believed. Heating a building enough that the pipes don't freeze and you don't have to wear everything you own is one thing. Heating it to the extent that you not only don't need a sweater but can't wear one because you'd die of heatstroke is quite another. Also - without a word of a lie - the same indoor temperature that people want in winter is typically considered unbearable in summer and addressed with heavy doses of a/c.
-
The worst thing is: these are not bad people. They're not stupid. They're not spending hours each day burning crosses on their neighbours' lawns. They're not uneducated or ignorant of history.
I'm right there with you, up to that last clause. A lot of Americans ARE very ignorant of history and the ignorance matters, it matters a lot.
If the public doesn't know the answer to questions like "how did Iran come to be an 'islamic republic'?" or "where did the Taliban get all those weapons anyway?", we're all going to ride to "doomed to repeat it" in the same handbasket. -
Double Pfft. I was raised and educated in Hawera and bleach was never part of this. Peroxide was, however.
By my best guess, she was a year ahead of you at Hawera High School. Maybe they changed the cup-washing curriculum?
-
Shall we talk about my American friend who likes to keep the insides of her coffee cups nice and white by bleaching them?
Pfft, my auntie does that, and she lives in Hawera.
I'm pro rinsing. It's not just detergent that can end up on the dishes, it's everything else in your wash water too.
-
I accept the argument about the expense of short print runs, I really do, but has it really not occurred to anyone that the problem might not be so much that NZers don't want to buy NZ fiction as that they don't want to spend $30+ a pop on it?
That's luxury pricing, and it means that the books are going to either be rejected in favor of necessities or considered in competition with other luxury items. Faced with a $30 book by someone I've never heard of, I'm much more likely to look for it in the library or second hand bookshop than I would be at $10 or $15 [*].
Maybe we'd all buy a lot more NZ books at that price point?
[*] Ok, in actual fact I do buy a certain amount of NZ fiction - out of a combination of homesickness and bloodymindedness - but it is expensive and I am well aware that I'm lucky to have the option. -
This is the tale of a tiny snail
And a great big, grey-blue humpback whaleBut in French it is quite philosophical:
Regarde, le petit escargot est sur la roche
A quoi pense-t-il?
Pourquoi il est la?Now I find myself wondering whether Moominland Midwinter isn't actually supposed to be a jolly ensemble story about a zany house party.
Or how it works in other directions.
"Miss Brill went for a lovely walk, saw a nice young couple, and then had cake!"