perspectives from urban bohemia

yesterday i repotted my tomatoes and money tree into 5-quart tin buckets so they’d have more room to grow and thrive…and now i don’t have space for any more plants. in fact, i barely have room to put anything else on my desk other than the plants, my computer and a magazine. no more plants allowed in this studio apartment! unless i buy some of those hanging things that i have to drill into the ceiling. that seems a little ambitious and unnecessary, though. don’t want to turn into this (NYC-style):

in any case, my plants are doing wonderfully, and, like the crazy plant woman that i’ve become, i’ve taken to photographing their progress like one would do a baby’s. some people take pictures of their babies’ feet and them eating and being all cute; i whisper encouragement to my sprouts and pet their tiny leaves and upload pictures of them to facebook. case in point:

but it pleases me to see them get bigger. i keep wondering when they’re going to be big enough for me to eat them! (cannabalistic mom.) this morning i sampled an arugula sprout that got injured during the last watering—it was slowly starting to wilt. so i plucked it out of the soil and (washed it) and ate it. was yum! tasted like any other arugula growing anywhere else would taste: peppery, nutty, fragrant. i’m like a full-fledged farmer now, growing my own edibles.

speaking of eating, i need to go eat some breakfast. today i go over to kanani’s to watch keira knightley movies to determine whether or not we hate her. i’m contributing pride & prejudice, which i love and is one of my four go-to movies when there’s nothing else to watch (also including marie antoinette, the life aquatic and snatch), and she is putting atonement on the table, which i’ve never seen. kanani’s never seen p&p, so we’re on even footing here. we might also top those off with love actually, but probably not, since her performance in that movie mostly consists of her showing her wolf teeth a lot and kissing her husband’s best friend when he makes her the most romantic signs ever on christmas.

fin!

admin love, random musings arugula, crazy plant lady, farming, keira knightley, plants

a week ago today, i volunteered for the first time at brooklyn grange, which is a one-acre rooftop farm that grows all kinds of vegetables, flowers, chickens, bees. actually, the chickens and bees are probably all one kind. anyway. i tried to get some friends to go, but jeff was stuck working all day on a saturday (woof), alex was out of town, and no one from brunch club particularly wanted to go. so i went alone, and i think it was for the best that my first time was by myself, because i really got everything i could out of the experience: i met new people, i learned the ropes of cultivating crops, i participated in back-breaking manual labor without the distractions of conversation.

when i first got there, i: transplanted lettuce; weeded a mustard green patch; planted, manured and watered some oats, turnips, bokchoy and beets; cleared out a dead lettuce patch that was being turned into an onion patch; picked (and ate) tomatoes; and carried a bunch of logs that were being used in a shitake-growing workshop. it was offered that the volunteers could stay and learn about shitake growing, and even take home a half-log for $10, but the idea of growing mushrooms in my closet for a year freaked me the fuck out. besides, i don’t even really like mushrooms.

i was also interviewed by a swiss journalist named patrick (i thought this was strange), who asked me about my thoughts on the ecological crisis and organic eating while his partner shot some candid photos of me talking. i have strong thoughts on these things; after reading the jungle effect by daphne miller, MD, and recommending it to everyone i know, i’ve become a convert to the organic, locavore way of life—i talk about this in the commentary for my photograph of rainbow chard sprouts. mostly, though, i’ve been reading an increasing number of articles on the ecological crisis, such as this blog post in fast company, as well as ones in food & wine magazine, which i subscribe to. not to mention that mayan elder article thing i link to on my rainbow chard sprouts page…spooky.

back to the rooftop farm, though. i’ve decided that i’ll volunteer twice a month from now on. simply because i need something in my life that makes me feel enriched and like i’m giving back to the earth in some way, which i don’t often feel in my day job. not to say i don’t love my day job (in advertising), because i do, it’s just that i’m not directly affecting change in any way through it—at least not the kind of change i care about. but also, it was really beautiful up there on that roof. see photographic evidence as follows:

and now let me conclude with a chipotle music video featuring willie nelson covering coldplay’s “the scientist”. it’s about putting an end to factory farms and “going back to the start”. of course, i loved chipotle fanatically before because, as chris says, chipotle is “the food of angels”. however, this video makes me love them even more, if that’s even possible. so cute! so environmentally conscious! good job, er…mcdonald’s corporation.

admin love brooklyn grange, chipotle, ecological crisis, organic eating, queens, rainbow chard sprouts, rooftop farm, the jungle effect

thus losing all my posts from like 2007 and 2008 and maybe a few attempts at being a better blogger in 2009 and 2010. i have mixed feelings about this since, on the one hand, it was creative(?), emotional output during a tenuous time in my life, working jobs i disliked, harboring unrequited love for a dude who didn’t really give a shit, living with dirty hippie hipsters and all that. on the other hand, it’s good to not have that shit all documented and hanging around me on the internet like a dead albatross. so…good! new beginnings. maybe i’ll actually be inspired enough to write regularly, though let’s not hold our breath.

the biggest pain in the ass resulting from migrating my entire website to a different domain host and having to create a new server for the blog is editing the CSS for the blog, which i painstakingly did back in the day. also, since i haven’t been CSSing in a couple years now, i’ve forgotten things like “text-transform” and blah blah. anyway, annoying.

i don’t really know how i got to this place today—this place being the here and now, writing this test blog entry (so i can check the CSS, obviously) and futzing with the blog to begin with, all before 10:30am on a saturday. who am i, waking up at 8:30 on the weekend? dislike! my eyes are begging me to pluck them out and soak them in some water because they’re tired. (i’m beetlejuice, apparently, coming up with shit like that.)

in closing, on a note other than me bitching about the woes of being awake and productive so early on a day meant for relaxing, i’ll mention that i’ve been a frequenter of sur la table recently, having decided that i need expensive, upscale kitchen items for my kitchen that is solely mine (i love living alone). one of my work friends told me about a south park episode about sur la table; i only just watched it now, with the intent of posting it here. i don’t know why i’m being so random right now. i’ll go have some coffee after this.

without further ado:

admin uncategorized albatross, css, south park, sur la table