badger cannon

Work. Fixing bugs. Bedroom is now officially Organized. Moving on to Bathroom.

WARNING: Biological Icky Bits Ahead!

Guess what I found!?

This peculiar devil is the larval form of the American Carrion Beetle! How cool is that? (They feed on mushrooms and dead bugs as well as rotting meat, so I hasten to assure you that I do not, in fact, have dead bodies rotting in the woods. At least, to the best of my knowledge.)

Spring sprung and was promptly batted aside by summer, so it’s hot and humid in the garden, and I am trying to stay ahead of the stiltgrass with copious amounts of mulch, because the flamethrower is questionable in a dry pine wood and would also take out all my nice jewelweed that has established so marvelously.  Thinking of trying to fight it by transplanting in Virginia knotweed, which is an aggressive loon of a plant, but native, attractive, and host to a couple of butterfly species. (I have the variegated form, “Painter’s Palette,” which comes true from seed and boy, is there a lot of seed!)

Other than that, everything is blooming, the pollinators are out in force, I had a Zebra Swallowtail show up the other day (an uncommon butterfly in this neck of the woods!) and the pond is full of frogs and predacious diving beetles. On the downside, the weird cold/hot/cold/hot weather sent most of the spring veggies straight to bolting, so I got no daikons, some very sad beets, and the tomatoes are already starting to come in. Lost a bunch of peppers, too. Sigh. But the cucumbers and squash are happy, and I am holding out hope that the peas will produce a batch before the heat exhausts them. (A lot of local farmers just gave up and plowed the peas under. Can’t blame ‘em. This has been demented weather.)

Craw-Bob is still in residence. Haven’t gotten a good look at him, but we’ve got the night vision cameras and just need to get them working with the house network. Mostly he’s a flash of movement into the hole as I go by.

The Patio That Shall Not Be Named has been graveled, sanded, mortared, and now needs bricks. I’m traveling at the end of the week, but hold out hope of getting it done before June rolls around. (All productivity must be crammed into this month, because June is solid travel and July and August will be miserably hot.)

I had a bit of a wildlife mystery this morning. Was going out to feed the birds and found—there’s no other way to say it—a pile of viscera in the middle of the path. Somebody had left their guts in a neat pile on the ground.

Being me, I of course immediately poked them with a stick. Yup. That’s guts, all right.

Guts and….earthworms?

For whatever weird reason, there were a bunch of dead earthworms in the pile as well.

I wracked my brain—had something vomited and lost guts and earthworms together? Was this some kind of weird version of an owl pellet?—until I realized that the earthworms were from INSIDE the guts. Our deceased gut-owner had been out eating earthworms, and had quite a solid meal, then something jumped him, eviscerated him, and presumably ate the tasty bits. (I would have thought the viscera WERE tasty bits, but apparently somebody was picky.)

My guess is that the victim was a large frog, but I’ve got no idea what the killer was. I tossed the remains out of dog range—hopefully either Craw-Bob or the carrion beetles will find it and start the clean-up process.

So that’s all the excitement around here at the moment. Guts! Bugs! Mulch! THRILLS! CHILLS! ETC!

Originally published at Squash's Garden. You can comment here or there.

I like me some Kafka, but translation always presents difficulties. I am thinking of that first sentence, one of the most famous first sentences in world literature. I knew the Joachim Neugroschel translation: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." Now, the original goes like this: "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt." Ungeziefer is the thing Gregor has turned into, and that doesn't mean "insect" specifically, it means something more general, something verminous. So maybe David Wyllie's translation is better: "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin." But that just doesn't seem to have the same punch, does it? Who speaks of "a vermin," after all? And nothing in English is going to match the sound of ungeheuren Ungeziefer, and it becomes clear from the next few sentences that Gregor is some kind of bug, so maybe "gigantic insect" is the best one can do. Which irritates me.

How readily can English capture the literary intention of an author writing in a language where the verbs are kept until the end, anyway? The way Kafka was writing it, Gregor is into an ungeheuren Ungeziefer transformed. Word choice is irrelevant to the totally different shape of the sentences. Maybe it even reads better in English, because it ends with the surprising part, which is what Gregor has become. There's no topping ungeheuren Ungeziefer, though. I bet that would be fun to say, if I were able to.

And now, to finish up my posts about going to Victoria at the beginning of April, here’s the recounting of what we did on Sunday of that weekend! The previous posts, for those of you who may have missed them, are:

• Friday, in which Anna and Dara declare that 6:30am is not an actual time of day, in which a ferry is taken, in which the Royal BC Museum has HOLY SHIT MAMMOTH!, and in which Fernwood has a highly awesome open mic
• Saturday morning and afternoon, in which much wandering of downtown Victoria is done, in which Anna’s new mammoth is photographed having adventures, in which books in French are bought, and in which Anna acquires SURPRISE GUITAR!
• Saturday evening, in which Anna and Dara have a spectacular time seeing Le Vent du Nord, in which Anna’s mammoth meets a polar bear, and in which there is photographic evidence of fiddle players

On to the final leg of the Victoria adventure: Sunday!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Still alive! Having lots of fun and missing my baby. I'll bring you next time, little man!

Crocotour was lots of fun! The crocodiles pretty much just sat there, being large and cold-blooded in a sunbeam. I hear you, crocs. We saw some much livelier hippos, who were interested in being thrown lettuce by our guides, and a giraffe came up to snuggle our truck. Dawww! Then a light lunch of "African-inspired cuisine," which at Disney means strawberry yogurt, prosciutto, pita bread, fruit salad, a salmon and cream cheese pinwheel, and some figs. I was about to snicker at it when a teenager from the midwest announced he couldn't eat his exotic meal, and the guides produced packaged apple slices and a PB&J sammich for him, because apparently this meal very commonly proves to be too out there for the guests. Well then!

I rode the Aerosmith coaster at Hollywood Studios, which is a lot of fun and which inverts you several times in sweet hotwheels-type loops. As I got off, a little girl and her mom got off too.

Mom: "Sweetie, are you okay?"
Girl: "I... I think I'm gonna..."
Mom: "Honey?"
Girl: *DOES A CARTWHEEL*
Mom: "..."
Girl: "I feel better now."

The mom had the greatest look on her face, like, "I have so been played."

I had a horrible lovely dinner with the Crowells, yay! And then we went to see the new Star Trek, which EEEEE I LOVE IT. I will restrain my spoilery feelings, but I will just say that the first planet they were on had me so sold, because they used advanced CG and makeup and effects to MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A CHEESY PAPIER MACHÉ SET and I LOVE YOU NOW. I am totes a next generation girl, but these movies are such a love song to the original series. I am utterly charmed.

Today we went to Epcot! I rode the mexico boat ride which is... the story of Donald being an ugly American tourist? I love Quasi-Educational Boat Rides. I sampled some of the wee taste of garden of food of festival of epcot of weekend of whatever it's called snacks. Yay, tiny food on sticks! Then I got heatstroke! (Or rather heat exhaustion, the considerably less serious precursor to heat stroke. Dizzy, puky, and headachey, instead of brain damage and shock and stuff.) I sat down and Patty & Seanan fanned me and fetched me water and then I decided to go back to the hotel instead of riding actual for real rides today. On the way to the bus loop it started bucketing rain and I felt much better. It's very hot here this week, even for Florida! I am told anyway! Honestly I'm sure I could get heat exhaustion during a cold snap in winter here, but anyway. I feel much better now.

I awoke from my post-melting-nap when a fiddler arrived in my room! HI FIDDLAR I MISSED YOU. We had a nap, by which I mean gin and room service, and tried to find out if Amazing Crazy Waiter from two years ago still worked downtown. He does! But he is not working today. We had a lovely but not epic and legendary meal at the same restaurant. I got to meet the previously imaginary Simon! He betrayed me with my own pen within five minutes, it was amazing. He is a darling boy who is VERY RELATED to his parents. Then Patty and I went to see Star Trek AGAIN, because she hadn't seen it yet and I needed to be able to squeak excitedly at her about it. Mission accomplished! Fanfic deployed! By which I mean no fanfic deployed, we are going to bed because it is late and Amy has totally got a 7am alarm set so she can pounce on coasters. As one does.

Today was focused on catching up on chores. Dishes for my, laundry for Loree. Dinner with Chuck and Margo and Chase.

I spent the weekend at the old place with m'boy. Aspiring Ex was off at a writing retreat, so we spent the weekend shopping for a bigger bed, having dinner together, and arguing about who's got better journalism. Business as usual, more or less.

I promised m'boy we would see the new Star Trek movie if he finished his homework in time, and that's what happened. It makes me sad (again) to see a venerable and once innovative sci-fi franchise reduced to space opera. The things I do for my son.

Speaking of sad, dating still sucks, and Bigpuppy woke me at 0610 this morning. I think it's going to be an early night if I can ever get out from under my work issues. At least running errands around the neighborhood on foot this afternoon was lovely.

I guess this weekend was my penance for all the fun I had with queer and trans women over the last week.

Saturday, May 20th, 1972, was the first time I ever saw Paula. She and her parents were driving from Texas to California, and had stopped in Tucson to visit with Adeline McAvenia. Mrs. Mac and Paula's mother had worked together at Texas Women's University school of nursing.

During that visit, Mrs. Mac asked Paula if she'd like a job working as a nurses aide for her. Because of that job offer, Paula would end up living with Mrs. Mac in Tucson. I'd spend a lot of time with her over the next several months.

Tomorrow will be the 41st anniversary of that first meeting.

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Poking around with an app for steamcon. Went shopping and got caught in 99-related traffic. Went to grocery store while hungry.