I've discovered that I really, really like pruning.

My trusty double-bladed pruning hand-saw* and I have felled one rhododendron and taken a good ten feet of height off another one. Not that I'd ever just head them back, mind you -- I hate seeing poor sheared trees, and I prune righteously, with the best of principles in mind. Of course, the fact that I mean well doesn't make up for the fact that I haven't a clue what I'm doing, but I don't really like rhodies to begin with, so if I really screw up I can take 'em out.

I mean, I'd feel really guilty about it, but I could.

I didn't feel guilty about the rhody I felled because it was such a poor pitiful thing to begin with, smashed next to it's sibling, under a veritable forest of light-blocking trees, and choked with ivy and blackberries. No guilt there.

I do worry about what it does to my character. I'm starting to understand the thrill of the hunt. If I had a truck, I would have mounted that 15 foot limb to the hood after I finally pulled it out of the tree (madalchemist forbade mounting it over the fireplace). I exhaust myself, but I can't tear myself away from the floral devastation. I took out several limbs today, despite knowing I have a gig on Friday that will require all my energy (No upper body strength to speak of + hand saw + 2 days = STIFF!). It's a tree carnage addiction.

Now, exhausted and with hair full of twigs, I'm tearing myself away from the yard so that I can paint a wall in the kitchen, because the gray-primer it has now is depressing. Candy-apple red, here I come!

*I borrowed it from my mother. It has serrations on both sides, which is about as obnoxious and impractical as it sounds, rather like those D&D weapons that consist of three words and a flail tied together in the middle.

In the hour between getting off work and twilight, I went out to the back 40* and pruned one of the compost bins (pics later, but it's a wire enclosure with a full pelt of ivy). I wanted to clean it a bit before I put leaves in.

Then I got distracted.

I clipped ivy from the cherry tree. I clipped bits off the neighbor's cedar that's in my yard, so my tarp-o-leaves wouldn't catch when I heaved it into the bin. I clipped more ivy from the cherry tree. I ripped ivy from the cherry tree. I YANKED such that a stem as big around as my thumb detached itself for some length, and remained, hanging like a jungle vine, attached by bits twenty feet up that were out of my reach. I looked at the hanging vine and though vaguely of rapunzel.

Suddenly it seemed fitting that Agony, the Princes' song from Into the Woods, was stuck in my head.
Agony!
Beyond power of speech,
When the one thing you want
Is the only thing out of your reach.

What's so so intriguing
Or half so fatiguing
As what's out of reach?

I abandoned the ivy to test the strength of the wisteria.

Everyone else who's been to my yard has said something about how much they love wisteria. It's a beautiful plant, and the way it twines around itself is fascinating. It's also rated in Washington as "Aggressive", which means that though it's not officially categorized as "Invasive: Will choke out native forests and create a great wisteria barrens through which none dare tread", it will eat your yard, house, and pets if given half a chance. Wisteria is the plant equivalent of giant, dangerous African animals: Charismatic Mega Flora. Everyone loves it, except for the people who have it eat or trample everything they hold dear.

At my place, it had already started in on the porch roof supports.

Had.

Great masses of wisteria now lie on the cement patio. The beast is still crawling through the lilac above it, and several more battles (and a ladder) are needed to get it down to a manageable size, but it is no longer an immediate danger to the patio roof.

I think I may just be able to beat the wisteria. It's reassuring to have a task at which I might win to take my mind off of the ivy. Wisteria is mighty, but Ivy is sneaky. Ivy comes up everywhere, where you least expect it, and I can't seem to shake the sneaking suspicion that it's actually higher on the food chain than I am.

*Square feet.

A week is not really enough vacation time to move into a new house, especially when one spends three days of it in a different city for a wedding*. I have cabinets to paint and boxes to unpack and leaves to rake and, worst of all, an old appartment to clean. It's beautifully sunny out and I want to be massacring helpless plant life pruning things in the backyard.

Greg, one of my music friends, is also a landscaper, and he came over this weekend and walked around the yard with me, so I now have firm identifications on a few more plants, and tentative IDs on even more. The number of small volunteer trees I have to get rid of is almost intimidating. As a general rule I love trees, but some things just don't work, and a black walnut growing less than a foot from the patio, 8 feet from the house, up through a lilac and a wisteria, and underneath a big leaf maple -- this is one of those things that will just never work.

That's in the NE corner of the backyard. The NW is a jungle of blackberries and ivy covering undistinguishable shapes that might be old compost bins, tree stumps, trash, or long-dormant man-eating forest creatures.

The SW bit has a cherry tree (not sure if it's native, which would be mostly ornamental, or a fruit variety). The cherry tree has multiple smaller cherry tree children around the yard, but the whole cherry-flock is in need of more light and space to survive; the smaller ones I'm going to rip out. For the largest cherry, I need to rip out the leggy, straight-stemmed rhododendron that's growing up fifteen feet into the cherry's branches, and seriously trim the other rhody in front of it. I might get rid of it -- I don't like rhodies -- but I'm hesitant to tear out established plants that are doing well and have reasonable shape. Also in the SW corner is my favorite yard feature. It's dead. It might have been a rhododendron once, but now it's just a marvelously sculptural arrangement of verdant moss covered branches. I love my dead shrub.

The SE bit has a large and tangled Spirea-of-undeterminate-variety, and something that might be a native willow. It's also the only area of the backyard that gets sun all year round, so eventually I'll tear out it's grass and grow lilies and things there. The it-might-be-a-willow is a challenge -- weird and scraggly and tightly curved starting from the base. Greg pointed out a sucker that, given twenty years to grow, might help make the tree look more balanced, but I'm inclined to lop off the only truly vertical trunk and encourage it's freakishly twisted nature. It's like a monster bonsai.

Plunk in the middle of all this sits the grandfather maple. It's massive. I have been raking, oh, how I have been raking, but I love the tree.

And that's my lunch break over. Back to work.

*An awesome wedding, but still.

I picked up keys on Thursday and had a marvelous musical house-opening, with a picnic in the living room and tunes with Erik, Dad, and special guest star Gerald.

Friday mom and I ran house-ish errands, and totally failed to get much done, due mostly to my being sick.

Today I'm still sick, but with my folks, Erik, Rob & emony42, we got everything requiring a large-capacity vehicle moved from the appartment to my house. There's still kitchen stuff, tools, piles-o-crap, and the computer I'm using to type this sitting on the floor in the appartment.

I don't get internet at the new house till AFTER I'm back from Bellingham, so if you need to get a hold of me, call!

Now I'm returning to my slow-motion sick-girl packing, so that I can go to the house and have a nap. It's not 'home' yet, so despite two domeciles, I'm feeling quite homeless.

One of the frequent make-nice statements between religionists-who-aren't-creationist-nuts and scientists-who'd-rather-work-than-argue is that science can handle the explicable, but religion is there for "The Big Questions." I'm totally for more accord and less name-calling, and I think agreeing to mind your own business is a damn fine way of getting work done, as long as the business you're ignoring isn't really nasty. But I have a deep-seated problem with the assertion that religion is there to handle "The Big Questions." For one, I always thought the whole issue of black holes and galaxies and all was pretty damn big. More importantly, I seem to have fundamental issues with "The Big Questions" themselves.

Not the answers. The questions.

When you ask "So, what ARE the big questions?" chances are the first is "Why are we here?" I have an answer for that one; it's the same as my answer to that other philosophical stumper, "What is art?" Ready?

I don't care.

That's the short answer. I'm far more interested in what we're going to do now than in why we're here, and saying that I don't care makes the point. There's another level of response though, which is that I don't really understand the question. That we are here is evident*. There doesn't HAVE to be a reason why. There's a how, there's an approximate when, but asking 'why' is baffling to me.

This all came up because I spent the weekend with my twin three-and-a-half-year-old cousins, who are well and truly into the 'why' phase. We were walking through the kitchen when one spied a box, stopped in total fascination, and asked "Sarah, Why is Baking Soda?"

The bafflement I felt then was just about the same as the bafflement I feel about "Why are we here?"



*You may disagree, but the only real disagreements are based on very tiresome sophomoric philosophy, and I've no time for them.

I want to make raised garden beds out of corrugated metal. I like the idea of round ones (picture a two-foot chunk of culvert material planted in the ground) and normal-rectangular beds with the corrugations running vertically. It is of course, easy to find smallish pieces of corrugated metal...if you want the corrugations to run lengthwise (vertical is merely my artistic preference, but it's a strong one). It is also easy to find round bits specifically made for round garden beds! In Australia.

So I suppose I'll have to keep looking, then.

I saw half of Olympia today without trying to. Look and be amazed!

@ Home Depot
Jon-computer-guy (coworker)
Bruce (Dad's former coworker)
zair99 (What? He doesn't even live in this town anymore!)

@ the Market
Sheri-from-Opas (former coworker)
Nancy-and-Erik (music buds)
Steph-sitar (Erik's music bud)
Iris & her parents (folks' neighbors)
Deb & Greg (music buds)
Catherine (dancing, mom's former coworker)

I was only out of the house for two hours!

Yesterday I read someone talking about the unfortunate split caused by two party politics, a sentiment I'd tend to agree with. They lost me, though, when they started playing the false-equivalency game, ie: "They're all nuts! You think the right wingers on fox are bad, but listen to the left wingers on NPR!"

As it happens, this morning I happened to have a borrowed car, and I listened to NPR on the way to work. I'm not over-joyed by their coverage -- particularly, I'd like to hear the important news on the pre-8-o-clock slot, not cute things about baseball and pizza. But given what their important political coverage DOES sound like...how could anyone in their right mind compare it to the vile, shouting talking heads you get on Faux? Anyone who thinks Renee Montagne calmly reading morning edition has the same polarizing impact as Glenn Beck or BillO screaming for blood and virtue has clearly got to be nuts.

Anyone who thinks NPR represents the voice of the radical left has never met anyone on the radical left. Seriously. I'M more liberal than NPR, and I'M not part of the 'radical' left.

I just noticed one of my (yes, many, I'm sure) character flaws. When I'm creating characters, I don't create *enough*. I've heard that adding too many characters at once is a common writing problem, but I end up with only two alone for long periods of time.

Example: before my hiatus total abandonment* of Butch & Spike, I'd realized that I had to add more characters, because I had two main characters (three if you count the horse) and only one of them could talk. This made dialogue and plotting a bit difficult. I actually have scripted out the next 20 or so strips, where I start remedying this problem, but who knows when they'll see the drawing table.

Recently I was possessed of the odd writing demon and worked a bit on Marik & Vaer's story, which falls prey to the same problem -- two people, on the run, ho hum, not nearly enough to mix it up. Incidental others whom you don't connect with. Last night I realized that the first repair to this was to have Leif, Marik's body-guard/foster-brother/best-friend/former-lover, run off with them. Hooray, extra interpersonal interaction, more dialogue opportunities!

But... Leif has no tongue.

What is my obsession with characters who can't talk?

Granted, Leif is a fairly fleshed out character, a character whom I really like, and he's fairly eloquent with his shrugs. There's a lot of unexplored intensity there, in fact, and having him along will give me more chance to explore it. For a wild moment last night, I wondered whether I should be telling the story from Leif's point of view -- hell, I've already changed PoV characters once, I could do it again! But for now, I think not.

I'm did start writing his back story from his view, while I was at work, though I might have lost what little I did. Hopefully it shows up in draft e-mail, because I really like Leif, and he deserves some story.


*It's not theoretically abandoned, it just looks that way for all practical purposes.

I just found a note which read

"Is a bus a bus when it's out of service? It's a virtual, non-bustling bus, and mom thinks it doesn't count if you hit it."

Hopefully my mom never has an accident with a bus, or I'll probably have to bring that up in court.

I'm listening to TED talks at work, currently Paul Ewald on creating gentler germs, by creating conditions that select for lower virulence.

Interesting stuff, and very clearly put -- if a parasite requires a living host for transmission, strains that quickly kill the host will die off. So, reducing opportunities for non-person-to-person transmition will create an evolutionary disadvantage for virulent strains. Cool!

Then I see this in the comments:
"But this is not domestication, this is out-competition. In other words, the organism did not ADAPT to be less of a severe pathogen, severe pathogens did not have any further advantage over milder forms."*

They forget to mention that severe pathogens actually have a disadvantage, because they incapacitate their host before the host can transmit infection.

The commenter is saying that what happens is NOT evolution...but it is, even by their own explanation. Evolution is not individual adaptation; evolution happens over populations. If the virulent strain in a viral population is "out-competed" to extinction, then the population has become less virulent.

On the happy hand, real discussion takes place in the comments! Woo!

My little brother is off to school! YAY! Folks dropped him off in Ellensburg yesterday, and Saturday night we had a going-away dinner at the Olympic Club in Centralia, where we had a blast playing pool. Reasonable games for everyone (bearing in mind that both Doozer and I are total n00bs), and then an EPIC GAME OF FAIL for Andrew and I. Apparently a single game of 8-ball is not supposed to take more than an hour. Who knew?

It wasn't that we couldn't get any balls in. It's that they kept coming out! Everything but the 8 had been in at least twice. Mom and Dad were very patient, and Erik only suggested I intentionally sink the 8 and Please-End-this-Misery once.

Brad and I had a lovely ride Friday, and he showed me how to clean my drive-train Sunday evening. Result: Sparkly clean drive-train! Woo!

In appartment-vs-house news, I finally finished chipping the old paint off of the bedroom register cover, sprayed it white, and reinstalled it. It only took me a year, and now I fix it right before I move (I've my eye on that deposit). I suppose living in my folks' project for years has made me blind to things like gaping holes in the walls with register covers leaning next to 'em.

Acting kind of like I'm moving even though I'm still waiting for the appraisal...*twitch*

In art, all the dinosaurs are stuck down, and I painted a soccer ball on a squashed partial-sphere, which is ridiculously tricky. Erik read quite a bit to keep me going, and we're now only two or three Points-of-View away from the end of A Game of Thrones. The next book is already borrowed and waiting for us.

Until this afternoon, my knowledge of crawl-spaces was limited to the grimy point of entry; dirty little hatches from which swearing emerged, followed eventually by my father.

Citing his already vast experience, my father declined to see the underside of my house-to-be. "I've been in more crawlspaces than I can count, and the nastiest places in Oregon State University. Have fun!" He then set about to some serious relaxation, with two plastic yard chairs pulled up under the maple tree, and binoculars in case an interesting bird flew by.

The inspector was surprised and a bit pleased that I was planning on following him under the house. He helped strap on the Darth Vader face respirator, and I tested it.

"Bill."
*heavy breaths*
"You are my father."

"Yup. Have fun!"

I emulated the inspector's slithering under the house technique. The "crawl" in this crawl-space is a marine crawl. I sympathize with gastropods. I am in touch with our brothers the snakes. I am now convinced that plumbers who work in 18 inch crawlspace deserve their exorbitant fees. Aside from the filth, I didn't actually find it that bad -- I'm reasonably compact and maneuverable -- but I wouldn't want to turn my face up to the insulation and work. Maybe with goggles.

The underside of the house looked just fine, and if I ever have the opportunity to go caving, I know I'll be able to face small chutes without a qualm. "What, it's just thousands of ton of rock over me? Not insulation dust? Let's party!"

There were a few issues with the house, but nothing too nasty. I have some negotiating to do around the giant water-damaged spot in the living room floor. We think someone spilled rather a lot of water, then they finished the floor without letting it dry, then covered it with a throw rug. It definitely didn't come up from underneath. We pulled the rug off to help it dry off, and we'll ask about what happened there. Water balloon fight? Kiddy-pool for a home birth*? Localized internal weather system?


*I always thought home-birth sounded painful. I mean, babies heads are big enough - have you seen the size of the average American HOME? Holy SHIT, passing one of those can not be pretty!

I know Homestreet will sell my loan, but I have to hand it to 'em...I've heard so many horror stories about poorly explained deals or scary loan officers, and Charlie-the-bank-lady has been FANTASTIC. She's been right on the ball explaining any little questions, replies to e-mails within the hour, often within 30 minutes, and has been willing to walk me through every step of the math and general economic factors that go into payments, rates, and the whole financing process. If you know how my mind works, you know I like LOTS of background data -- basically I want to be able to build the entire end product from scratch, or get there by first principles - and she's been amazingly patient at providing that. Yay Charlie!

Anyway, Charlie-the bank-lady gave me a gardening book (not the edition linked) when I went in to make formal application and lock my 5% rate. It's really a sweet thing to do (I saw the pile, so I know she gives one to everyone who signs a loan...I wonder if the condo-buyers get one on containers?). It's a cool book, and if the absolute worst happens, and I pour money in to this and then an foreclosed on years down the road, it will be the single most amazingly expensive book I'll ever own.

All this has me thinking about gardening, especially garden planning. I've done some shit garden design in the past, and this time, damn it, I'm going to do it right. I won't let myself buy stuff on a whim before I have a plan. Garden design, like almost all other art, needs to be painted in broad strokes FIRST. I have the opportunity to make something beautiful, and I do NOT want to screw it up.

I do want a to-scale plan of the current yard and where all the trees are, though. Oh, for a 100' tape measure!

Formal loan application had no suprises except for a 1/2% drop in interest rates. The extensive loan-shopping and over-zealous spread-sheet comparison I did early on has paid off, and I'm feeling very businesslike about the paperwork and finances.

I'm resisting the urge to yell "SEE?! I'm a BIG girl!" because I suspect that might damage my suave and experienced image.

I'd sighted a few, and fired at two, and finally I SHOT ONE! It might yet elude me, but it's staggering around and I'm in a good position to bag it.

If you prefer your metaphors to have dying animals that are a little less empathetic, then I've had my line in the water for awhile with two bites that came to nothing, and now I've actually set the hook.

There's still time for it to wriggle free, but the owner of the place on Tumwater Hill has accepted my offer.

We chatted about politics, and complications, and teeny steam-punk engines.

Now I need to find something to do with beets besides pickling and borscht. INTERNETS! TO MY AID!

The house-hunt continues. Marle (agent) and I went around all over Oly today, and saw lots of possibilities to sleep on but nothing that stood out from the crowd. Here's a rundown of their habitats and points, in order of sighting.

West Side
Brawne
Remarkable feature: LIVE, SLEEPING, SMOKING INHABITANT. I, uh, discovered this parasite when I looked in the second bedroom. We were wondering why it reeked of fresh cigarette smoke...now we know.
Pros: Great Location, cute street, close to co-op.
Cons: Smoke reeks. No back-yard (OK side yards). High price (for me) for only 2 bedrooms.

Cushing
Remarkable feature: Upstairs hand-painted with disney characters. Entire house interior either bright blue or bright yellow.
Pros: Close to many bus-lines, stores, etc. Upstairs bedroom has perfect little office-area outside by stairs. Great big garage with wire/water, and whole yard has been planted edibly. Cheap!
Cons: Only one block off two busy streets. Place is FILTHY -- must be painted totally before move-in. Probably needs at least two windows replaced. Insulation & heating situation are questionable.

Tumwater Hill
6th
Remarkable feature: None. This house is boring in every way. I do kind of like the plate they were using as a display prop, though.
Pros: Move-in-ready, 3 bedroom. Wood floors, nice back yard.
Cons: Rambler = boring. House the elderly might live in. Currently a bit out of my price range.

Eastside

State
Remarkable feature: It's one of those odd 1920s bungalows where they TOTALLY neglected to use the space in the upper-half story, so what could be a 3 bedroom house is only a 2 bedroom. No stairs, just a pull-down ladder.
Pros: Basement, nice back yard, cute, GREAT kitchen space.
Cons: State is pretty busy, even right there, so the front yard and room are loud. Comparatively small living room. Basement leaks.

South Bay
Remarkable feature: Teeny-tiny little ADU in back with a people inside! We did not catch a glimpse of the inhabitant.
Pros: Teeny-tiny ADU in the back, rented. Looks nice inside (only peered through windows), price is reasonable.
Cons: South Bay Drive is LOUD. LOUD LOUD LOUD. If the yard was in back, it'd be a possibility, but all the yard is in front, so there's no way I could live there. This is the one house that is definitely crossed off the list.

The Black Drop is in the running for "Best Coffee Shop in Western Washington." Go vote!

You can even add a review to your vote. I did!

"Their wit has a robust, rich flavor, with nutty undertones and the pleasant sharp bite of perfectly balanced tannins. And, of course, their coffee is excellent."

I don't even feel guilty for voting for them instead of nominating the roaster my sweetheart works for. Batdorf & Bronson roast a damn fine bean, and they're great employers, but they've never been my peeps.

Yo.

Even after three years, I feel like I ought to be getting ready to pack and move back up to Bellingham. Hopefully I can re-direct that energy into cleaning and househunting! It'd be great to have a new house by the time my early-fall energy turns into late-fall nest-making urges.