DFTBA!

This year has been…interesting. There are very few aspects of my life that haven’t changed this year. Most of them have been good, if stressful, changes. It’s been an insane year. At one point, I realized that I needed to just stop. Stop worrying, stop planning, stop doing. I spent two or three months indulging, being lazy and just generally being self absorbed. I stayed up late and slept in. About the only thing I did that was productive was go to work. Otherwise, I pretty much sat in front of the computer and watched TV. I let so many things slide that I should have been doing. It was a good and much needed time.

I was sleeping much more than normal. I didn’t get to bed until about three or four in the morning, if not later. I was about as lazy as you can get.

I planned on doing this until the end of the year, about six months. Just take a much needed sabbatical. But three months into my self-indulgent laziness, I started wanting my old self again.

I soon started sleeping less, and am now back to my old schedule of sleeping a few good hours a night, which has always been my normal.

Soon, I was planning again. Getting ready for the new year. It’s going to be a busy and much awesome year. Things that I had let fall by the wayside will be picked up, brushed off and improved. Projects I’d dropped will be started again. Things will be made. MANY things will be made!

I also started getting rid of things that I no longer needed in my life. I started putting things back in my life that I have been missing, or adding things that needed to be there, but weren’t.

I will finally finish my garden. This is the biggest one, and the one I let slide the most. I pretty much have to start all over again. But that’s fine. I’ll take it section by section. I will finally have that awesome garden I’ve been dreaming about. I think I know where to put the grapes too! It’s going to be a lot of work. I’m pretty much going to double dig the entire yard to get as much grass out of it as possible. (Yes, I’d still rather double dig a tenth of an acre of land than mow!) I’ll probably even buy compost! I know, sacrilege. But…the compost pile is one of the things I let go this year. It won’t be too long before it’s up and running again though, but until then, most of the yard is still about as devoid of nutrients as you can imagine after almost thirty years worth of monthly commercial yard sprays, even after almost five years of rest & slow improvements. It needs a huge jump start. The only thing that will grow are weeds and grass. And in my mind, most grass is a weed.

I will make more cheese & charcuterie, and will expand on both. I’ll finally make that beer I’ve been wanting to do. And at least one batch of mead. Heck, maybe even make some wine. I’ll make soap. I’ll finish my quilts. I’ll also finish off those pouches. I’ll make so many things I will get scared that I’m going to run out of cloth.

I’ll write. I’ll start my journal again. Yet another thing that got dropped like a stone. They are important to me, and I miss them.

I will plan more. I will be more social. I’ll do more outside of my own little world. Heck, I even plan on having people over during the holidays next year!

I will move more. I dropped any and all exercise in the past year, or even really any pretense of it. I miss going out on the trails and dragging home cool rocks, bones and bits and pieces of things that I find on my hikes. I miss the solitude, and the occasional danger. I miss the consternation in only planning a hike of a mile or two, then realizing at mile three that I might want to head back….another three miles. I love that feeling.

You know what? In spite of not doing any real exercise, I still managed to lose almost 65 pounds this year! Five of that was even during the holiday season. It’s amazing what finally being happy will do for you.

I feel like, at the age of forty-four, I’m finally a grown-up and can live the life I want. It’s going to take an incredible amount of work, and it’s going to be tough and exhausting, but I’m finally going to be able to be that person that I've always wanted to be. And that is an awesome thing.

And tomorrow, if we don’t get rain, I’m going to go hiking. At the very least, I'm also going to plant garlic.

Peppers, peppers and more peppers!

I have enough (red) Thai peppers and Kung Pao peppers to start making vinegars for each of them! I also have enough green of each that I'm really going to have to figure out what in the world to do with them! (Seriously, right now, at the beginning of the season, I have several dozen of the things on each plant! They'll keep producing until at least the next freeze, in NOVEMBER!) I will have a full bottle of each of them very soon. I'll dry some of them, but that still leaves a huge amount that I'm going to have to figure out something for! I also have three habaneros, and my Bhut Jolokia has finally started flowering! I've got lots of mild peppers, banana, gypsy and another kind. I've also got lots of ancho, pimento (hello homemade pimento cheese!!!), serrano, Anaheim, poblano and a couple of others. I will have no shortage of peppers this year! Now, how to use all of them?

Memorial Day

My father fought in World War II and the Korean War. He was in the Army Air Corp. He was shot in Korea. Sadly, this is about all I know of his military service. I would like to find out more, but the records for a lot of the military people serving in World War II were destroyed in a fire several years ago, way before the internet became so prevalent. I also was not able to be around him after my parents got divorced.

But there is a man whose story I am very familiar with. My Uncle Lew Bud Magee. He fought in World War I. He was injured there as well. Horrifically.

He was in a foxhole with many other men when a cannonball came whistling down to them and exploded. The shrapnel instantly shredded and killed everyone in the foxhole but my uncle. He was only shredded. They were able to get him to an ambulance. During the ride, there was a kid that had his toe shot off, screaming in pain. The man in the cot below my uncle told the kid to shut up, because the guy above him was raining blood on him and not saying a word. My uncle replied, "That's ok, I don't feel a thing."

By the time that they got him to the hospital, he had lost so much blood that he was non-responsive and they couldn't find a pulse. He was still awake though, just unable to let them know that he was still alive. They took him to the morgue with the other fallen.

My uncle was a Mason. There was a Colonel going through the morgue, paying his last respects to the dead. He was also a Mason. When he reached my uncle, he noticed my uncle's Masonic ring. He took my uncle's hand and sadly said, "Another brother down." My uncle was never sure what he did, but somehow, he let the Colonel know that he wasn't dead. The Colonel sprung into action.

He ran out into the hall and started shouting for some help. He screamed for blood for him. A very large Turk with very bad English skills came down the hallway yelling "Me give him blood!"

From there on, he was taken to surgery, stabilized, and recovered. He lived almost forty years after that. He was paralyzed from the waist down and still had shrapnel in his body until the day he died. There was just too much shrapnel in his body to remove it all without killing him. Pieces of shrapnel worked their way out of his body for decades after the attack.

My mother remembers sitting at his knee twenty years later. He was scratching his leg. Now, this was amazing, because he didn't have any feeling in his legs until this time. He was amazed that he could feel something under his skin itching like crazy. My mother was amazed when he pulled a bobby pin out of his leg. People think that the shrapnel in cannonballs is specifically made for the cannonball, and while this is true in a lot of cases, many times, they use whatever is at hand, like nails, screws, and bobby pins.

My uncle almost made the greatest sacrifice. The men in his foxhole did make the greatest sacrifice.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

By this time last year, we had already hit the 100's two months before, and we'd only had about 2 inches of rain. We had just started on a long hot dry summer full of misery that would end with what felt like Hell right on our doorstep. Millions of livestock were lost or sold off. Only a lucky few were able to get any kind of crops. We really did have to worry about running out of water, and in some places, they had to have it trucked in. I myself only got a handful of produce last year, and I had access to almost as much water as I wanted. I only mowed once last year, and that's because I hadn't mowed for the last time in 2010. I was already watering on a weekly basis and had been for about two months. We knew that we were going to be in for a long hot dry summer, but we had no idea just how bad it was going to be.

This year, we've already had almost 11 inches of rain, and we have yet to hit 100. It looks like it might be some time before we hit 100 too. We are fighting lots of weeds, and I've had to mow five times. There is a good portion of Texas that is no longer in a drought, and the ones that are still in a drought, like ourselves, are in the lowest levels of drought. I had already picked more produce two weeks ago this year than I did all of last year. We may be in for a rough summer, but it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as last year. Here in Round Rock, the lakes where we get our water are full, and have been for about a month now. I've had to water so little that I have to remind myself to do so. We will last through the summer, no matter how bad we get, and not have to worry about running out of water, like we did last year. If we are really lucky, we may have a few storms blow through and help us get back to where we were before this crap started.

For the Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

So....last night I had one of my episodes. For those that don't know, I was violently raped at knifepoint almost 20 years ago. While my flashbacks have become much less frequent over the intervening 20 years, they do still happen. I usually sink into the event and let it take me over. I do all the melancholy things that one would think one would do during that time. Get drunk, play sad or angry music, wail and bemoan my fate, rail at the nearest available male presence. (Monty is very lucky he was 200 miles away last night!) One of the things that I do is watch The Crow. That movie came out shortly after my attack, and quite literally saved my life. It gave me an outlet to pour all my rage and terror and pain into. It still helps sometimes. However, not last night.

I started down that path last night. I plugged in The Crow, started on my third beer and started plunging into the depths once again. But then, something happened. I did a little Google research. I found out that while he had been out on parole, he was now back in prison for parole violation. I got pissed off. Why in the hell was I letting this useless crapsack scumbag asshole do this to me again?? I refused to allow him that power again! I turned off The Crow, plugged in something a bit more Current Leah friendly (Boondock Saints and The Walking Dead, for those curious.), and did some writing. Oh, I still got drunk, and I don't really remember all that I wrote, but from what I've scanned of it, I wrote almost 4,000 words of a totally, awesomely strong character that completely owns her entire situation and refuses to let anyone or anything get in her way!

It was still an incredibly rough night, and I'm feeling the after effects of it now, but it was so much better than any of the other nights that this has happened! I ended up enjoying the feeling of power and ownership that I found. And the character? She was violently raped at knifepoint twenty years ago, except she nearly died because he slashed her throat near to the bone. She has a long scar running along the left side of her neck because of it, a physical reminder of the event. Now, she's trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, and while she's having a rough time of it, and she sometimes has her night terrors and cries in the dark when no one else is around, she's pretty much completely owning her situation and refusing to be beaten down. I am actually being rather cruel to her, and I've got some very nasty stuff in store for her, including very nearly killing her in a horrifically violent way. But she's looking at me and saying, "Fuck you! Throw it at me bitch! I will own this fucking joint and anyone or anything that comes against me!" and I love her so very dearly for it.

That folks, is how you survive something like this. Take that assbutt! (Thank you Supernatural for that wonderful epithet!)

I had a wonderful day! I planted tomatoes, basil & peppers at Unity Park Community Garden, where I'm the manager.

 This is my original plot. You can see the giant Texas bugs that are invading! I don't know know what I'm going to do about the praying mantis. If you look closely, you can see a deadly honey bee that has already killed a lizard, and has started eating it! You can also see the potatoes that are starting to really take off. I planted these back in January, and I'm amazed at how well they have grown in that short time! This is also my original bed. You can see some onions in the very back that I actually planted last winter! These guys are volunteers, and survived our horrible summer last year!

 I don't know if you can see it, but there's even more Texas sized bugs in this bed! This is the second bed that I've gotten. Currently it's planted with even more potatoes, some arugula (which I planted in the fall of 2010, and also survived our horrible summer!) and some Louisiana collards. Later on in the summer, when it gets warmer, I'm going to plant some okra in here.

 Here's my latest bed. This is the one that is going to hold all the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and basil. It will eventually have mulch in it thick enough to come to the top of the border. I am a firm believer in VERY THICK mulch. Three to six inches is my minimum. In our heat, with our lack of rain, it's the only way that we have even a chance of getting anything to grow.

 Here's another view of the tomato, pepper, eggplant and basil bed.

 Would you look at that snapdragon? Amazingly enough, this thing will be green all year round, and as soon as the weather cools down after the summer heat, it will be one of the first plants to flower. I've got some at home that are almost waist high now! I've always loved snapdragons, but after seeing how well they survived the summer last year, I love them even more. The grass in the lower right corner is a native Texas grass, Purple Muhly. It was a volunteer the very first year I had this plot, and I've never been able to get rid of it. It is so pretty! You can see from the photos in the link why I can't get rid of it.

 You can kind of see the potatoes that have just started to pop up here. That poor looking little snapdragon was nearly dead, with only the barest of green at the very bottom, by the time summer ended. I've only had two or three nearly die or completely die on me.

 Here's a better photo of my largest potato. There is a plot here that has some potatoes that are almost two feet tall! They were abandoned by a former gardener, after being planted last Spring. They also survived last Summer! I learned so much about plants last Summer and this Fall. I'm shocked at what survived.

 Here's another view of the potatoes. Those bags in the back? Those are donations to Hope Alliance. Ten pounds of collards, chard, sorrel, lettuce, radishes, spinach, thyme & sage!

 Our pomegranate tree! The Baha'i church gave it to us when we started. They have been wonderful enough to rent us the land that we garden on. They are great people!

 A flower! This is one of two flowers on the pomegranate tree! This is the first year for flowers! We've had this tree in the ground for almost three years now.

 Ahh, current photos of the garden. This is the herb bed. As you can see, it is currently in a state of disrepair. After last Summer, which was the driest and hottest summer on record here in Texas, it fell to ruin. I was also sick all summer, which didn't help much. But , it seems to be coming back fairly well. This is a good photo of how I do my beds now. I'll cover them with a layer or two of cardboard, then cover them with compost, then a layer o

 Another view of the herb bed, leading to the backyard. The tree was severely trimmed last year by the utility company, but seems to be coming back just fine!

 Oh, how I love my veggie bed! Yup, not only do I have three beds at the garden, I've got four at home! Not counting all the beds along the fence line. But here at home, as you can see, I can let things go to seed. The collards and broccoli have gone to seed, as well as the arugula. I would cut them, but I just don't have the heart. There are so many bees, butterflies and moths that are eating off of them. I can wait. They need the food!

 Here's another view of the veggie beds. You can see the little gnome on the rain barrel watching over the potager.

 Yet another view. I am so proud of my compost bin system. Incredibly simple! And nearly FREE! Eleven pallets and a little wire to hold them together. I have a firm belief that you should only have to pay for plants and garden art. Even garden art can be had for free or very little money.

 I just can't stop taking photos of this garden!

 Here's a better view of the compost bins. I use leaves for the brown. For the green I use my kitchen scraps, coffee grounds from the coffee shops around town, various manures (That have proven to not be poisonous to the plants! Some of it can contain an herbicide that will last for years and will kill your garden!), I've used buffalo, chicken, horse & goat, as well as bat from the bat bridge down the street, and spent grains from the local breweries. I plan my shopping route to maximize the number of coffee shops and breweries! I actually have Google Maps of them!

 I have almost finally finished the bed around the trash tree in the backyard. This poor thing was nearly dead when we moved in, and we were working on cutting it down. It is the typical tree that is installed when these 'burbs are built. Meant to grow quick, they usually die in twenty or so years. This one has started bouncing back! I think that's because I've stopped using chemicals, planted things under it that I want, therefore it gets water, and other than that, ignore it. It provides wonderful shade for the veggie garden in our hot Summer evenings. My Katrina rose, on the left, has started exploding with growth! It's about to bloom!

 Ooh. My rose bed. With lots of snapdragons. And a water bath for the birds and a surfboard. This is one of my pride and joys in my garden. I've got four roses here, three of them my husband bought for me for our anniversary last year. He always gets me tools or plants, or rather, has me get them, for anniversaries, birthdays or special occasions. Love that man!

Wow. This poor thing. This was taken in May of 2010. All of the next photos were taken then. This particular spot doesn't look much better now. I'm in the process of taking all the rock out and removing a very large part of the dirt and grass. (To be composted for at least a year, of course! No waste here!) I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it. I'm thinking that I might put some olive trees, sage, maybe some more rosemary or other herbs here. The one thing that is staying is the pomegranate tree.

 This part of the yard is now almost completely covered in beds, glass mulch sidewalks and mulched pathways. The spot in the right corner, with the planters, is now a very nice glass mulched patio. I'm amazed at the amount of work I've done on this thing! And I'm not done yet.

 My pomegranate tree. I hope that it blooms this year. it's almost three years old!

 This is part of the herb bed and its walkway. Glass mulch doesn't work very well in areas next to plants. They tend to take over, and unlike wood mulch, it doesn't compact too well, thus not smothering weeds as well as wood mulch. This area is now a wood mulch path.

 Here's another view of it. I got that little yellow truck when I visited my brother and best friend in Monroe, LA. It's now on the patio, full of Mardi Gras beads.

 Man, this little agave is almost three times this size now, with tons of babies! I can't wait to get current photos posted of it!

 Oh, this area does not look like this now! The only things that have remained the same are the rosemary and the galvanized washtub. The washtub now holds a Calomondin orange that is currently flowering like mad, and has a couple of pea sized oranges on it!

 OH! Here's what the veggie garden looked like two years ago! So different. So much better! I loved when the new neighbors put the wood fence up. As you see, there is another bed, the compost bins, and yet another bed here!

 Those chairs are where the compost bins now sit! Just off to the right side is a three foot deep firepit that I dug, which is now filled in and covered by yet another bed.

 What a difference two years make! The rue is still there, but that's about it.

Again, here's the rose bed. This really shows the difference between now and when this photo was taken. That bird bath is in the same exact spot as in the above photo!

While I was at Unity Park, I collected chard, Louisiana collards, sorrel, thyme, sage, spinach, radishes, spring mix lettuce, flat & curly leaf parsley, and cilantro for the women at the Hope Alliance Crisis Center, for a total of ten pounds of veggies. (!!!) When I delivered it, I saw that I need to cut down a little on the parsley and cilantro, but everything else was GONE!! I've been picking about ten pounds of greens, lettuces & spinach for the past month for the shelter, so I am very happy that they are enjoying it so much! I've had to use the services of a battered women's shelter in the past, and I can't imagine not working with them now that I don't need them. Sadly, they will always be in business and always be needed.

I made a short stop at the Goodwill, but didn't find anything. I did, however, see my across the street neighbor, and he told me that he liked what I was doing with the front yard and thought it looked really good. Since he is a gardener, and an excellent stonemason, I consider this high praise.

When I got home, I was going to work on the house, inside, but it was such a beautiful day I couldn't force myself inside. So Shinji and I went outside for the rest of the afternoon. I turned ALL the compost bins, all four of them! (I just started the current layout of bins, so I'm only using four out of five of them right now.) I also built up the rock wall surrounding the tree a little bit more, finished the original glass bottle border in the backyard, and started the final glass bottle border on the north side of the house since a friend of mine dropped off about 4 dozen rum bottles. Shinji wandered the yard, played in the leaves & rested under the porch. I managed to only scrape my knuckles a little bit, which I consider a major win, since I usually end up with a big gouge out of a finger or my hand when I do hard work in the garden.

Thank you so much for making it to the end of this post!

Kony 2012 and My Thoughts

I've been silent about the whole Kony 2012 thing. I have seen the video. It left a bad taste in my mouth. The point that made me stop watching, that honestly enraged me, was when he explained what Kony was doing to his 4 year old son. YOU DON'T DO THAT TO A KID!!! That was horribly manipulative and cruel. I'd even go so far as say it was evil. You can easily destroy a kid's life by telling them things like that when they are so young! I speak from experience here. What he should have done is tell his kid that Kony is a bad man the hurts people, and so he's trying to help the people that have been hurt. That's all that a kid of his age really needs to know, or can properly process. They've seen the bad guys in the cartoons, they'll get it. There's also that photo. I'm sure that you've heard about it if you've seen any news articles written about Kony 2012. The photo of them posing with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, smiling, with rifles in their hands. These two things, his interaction with his kid, and him posing with the army while holding rifles, stunned me. I don't know of any peaceful aid organization that would do that. It's stupid at best. At worst, it's pandering to an organization (the SPLA) that has been reported as just as bad as the LRA.

Wil Wheaton and Neil Gaiman have both posted excellent articles about the Kony 2012 fracas, which really sums up the majority of my feelings about this whole thing. This Atlantic article also brings forth another thing about the Kony 2012 compaign. White guilt and imperialism. I have to agree.

This whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I haven't supported it, and I won't. There are things being done already to take care of the situation. This campaign may have actually made it worse. Plus, I personally like to support organizations that do smaller, more personal, less warlike things. One of my favorites is Kiva. They concentrate on microloans. You are loaning money to individuals to help them start businesses. They then repay that loan, and you can loan it out to other people. You can loan the same $25 multiple times to multiple people. Talk about a return on your money! Another one of my favorites is International Heifer. It is more of a charity, but they do great things nonetheless. An excellent site to find out more about any given organization is Charity Navigator. They have ratings for various charities. Kiva has four stars, and International Heifer has three stars.

In short, go ahead and write to your government. It can't hurt, and it might help. But as far as things you can do yourself, concentrate on the little stuff. Donate to local charities. Donate to smaller charities. Donate to charities that do more than throw money at a problem. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. You can't overthrow a dictator by yourself, but you can teach someone how to cook, or give them a small loan to buy a sewing machine to start a business. There are so many things that are so much simpler and concrete that we as individuals can do to improve the world.