rivervision

absolutely done. all the ones i’ve picked in the last few days have been horribly bitter. i think later tonight i’m going to rip them out of the garden as the vines are taking up a lot of space and keeping sun from some plants. it’ll feel good to do it. and then after the garden season is over, before everything freezes i’ll re-till the garden and let what’s left decompose into the soil. i hope that helps to make more nutrient soil for the next summer.

he’s the perfect colleague – he doesn’t have an ego, doesn’t say much at all, is great for my ego because he simply adores me.. the only problem is the closeness on a hot day in a second floor apartment can get a bit hot, but i can live with that. :)

oh and i forgot to mention. the hummingbirds, i noticed yesterday that their bellies are starting to grow as they begin to get ready for migration. i’ve now discovered that not only are hummingbird butts cute, but so are hummingbird bellies as well. :)

i ran into someone from my church on saturday at the market. she asked where i’ve been hiding.. it was a good question.. one place i’ve been hiding is really no one’s business, another place has been with my friends the p’s, in my garden, on my bed in my bedroom, and in c’s backyard hanging not only with her hummers, but also with her big ol’ dog smokey (or, as i’ve been calling him lately, smokers). he’s 1/2 irish wolf hound, 1/2 german shepard, and is ~2 years old and still very much a puppy:

oh yeah, and i’ve also been going to another church the last few weeks..

i bought the book “a wall in palestine” today. i noticed it a few weeks and have been putting off buying it, but today i finally gave in. i just started reading it this afternoon. it’s good. and even in the first few pages, it’s horribly heartbreaking. i’m not sure i’ll be able to get through the whole book simply because i feel so helpless here in the US to the situation there. here’s a sample grabbed from a longer post about the book at Mondoweiss – the speaker is talking about how life is now with the wall up, the causes of the problems she discusses is the wall.:

“The problem today is deciding whether or not I should keep my school open. The majority of my students and teachers living in East Jerusalem can no longer come, for lack of transportation. I still owe the bank twenty-five thousand dollars. How am I going to pay them back if I lose a good part of my students? In a single year, seventy-seven out of two hundred have left. I had thirty- four students in sixth grade before the wall. Now I have six. And I have to pay my teachers, who are working even if they have only a handful of students. How will I manage?”

here’s the publisher’s website for the book with an excerpt too.

You know those ‘Free Tibet’ stickers that people have on their cars? I would like one that says ‘Free Palestine’ and/or ‘Free Iraq’ and/or ‘Free Afghanistan’.

i’m still waiting for the jubilee tomatoes to ripen so i can eat them. i gave the first eggplant of the season to someone who is going above and beyond for me these days – i thought i’d picked it too soon, but they said it was a beautiful eggplant. i hope it was as yummy on the inside as it looked on the outside. there are a couple of cherry tomatoes growing and a couple of gypsy bells. i look forward to picking them and eating them. today i picked a purple bell too early and ate it. i say too early because it was a tad bitter. i’ll let the other one grow more. i have become skeptical of the cukes. all bitter. huge bummer. today i pondered ripping the cuke plants out of the garden all together because they are only producing bitter cukes and taking up a whole lot of freakin’ space in a small garden spot. i couldn’t do it, yet. we’ll see how this next cuke that’s soon to be ready to eat turns out.

i have done some work. i’m checking out what denzin and linc0ln have to say about inter-rater reliability when using a non-positivist epistemology. they say you don’t do it. i hope i can get to writing soon and when i do that i can make a good argument to convince a hard core positivist that inter-rater reliability shouldn’t be used in this particular case.

as the commercial that’s on tv just said “it’s late at night.” yes, it is. i should ponder sleep.

i went to fill out a promissory note for student loans for this upcoming year. they wanted parents and grandparents. okay. i can list a mother, but father, dead. and grandparents? dead. so i called to ask what i do about it. they said just put not applicable. i’m not sure which is worse – my father & grandparents being dead, or not applicable. honestly? not applicable feels like non-existent, never-existed. i’m sure that’s not what the nice man on the other end of the phone meant to mean, but that’s the existential meaning i carry with N/A. being the freakishly honest person that i am i think i’ll put dead for father and grandparents, rather than N/A. i think i may even put the date, 4/24/10 for dad, 2/22/03 for his ma, 1/06/00 for his papa, 12/01/00 for my mothers ma, and 1/13/10 for my mothers papa. they can’t be n/a, even on something as unimportant as a promissory note for student loans, they simply can’t be.

it’s been a long week, it’s not over yet. i’m extraordinarily tired.
here’s a picture of the wild rumpus, aka my garden:

poor little guy is going to be bothered soon as that is MY spot for sleeping.

i’m frustrated. i have lovely lovely cukes in my garden. today i picked one to have with lunch – thinking it had gotten big enough and fat enough to no longer be bitter.. i’ve eaten many the same size and they were sweet and delectable. when i cut into this one it was bitter. this is the second time this has happened and i’m not very happy about this. *sigh* i so love cucumbers, and i want to eat them all the time. *sigh*

in better news i did eat a small pepper that was refusing to grow anymore out on the lawn of the tabernacle after church today. that was lovely and tasted fresh. on the way to church i picked a cherry tomato, brushed the dirt of and popped it into my mouth – again, lovely and fresh. i look forward to my tomatoes being able to be harvested as i will eat them like they are apples, oh yes indeedy.  i also noticed an eggplant starting to come on – i need to look up some palestinian recipes for eggplant because it looks like i’ll have a lot of them. i may make some baba ghannouj, hopefully palestinian style, with some and freeze it for winter.