April 19th, 2017

elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017 08:44 am
I'm cranky my mac is at the shop... and that nothing turned out to be wrong with it in all the diagnostics. I'm happy this happened in just a few weeks before the warranty expired: i still have time to add two more years of Apple Care.

I'm delighted to discover pappadum make up so well in the microwave. I'm having boiled eggs seasoned with curry paste and pappadum for breakfast: delightful!

I also discovered that many of the oxalis and cudweeds around are natives: huzzah! On the other hand, my sister reports that crimson clover spreads -- when i thought it was an annual and doesn't set seed here. Gah, https://www.smithseed.com/seed/legumes/clovers/crimson-clover reports "excellent" reseeding. I wonder if i confused crimson clover with buckwheat. It still can't be as bad as the stilt grass. In "Other Non Natives That Are My Fault" the mixed cover crops that include brassicas are going to seed. I've gotten a good bit pulled up, but i thought i had a little more time.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017 08:54 am
Continue to feel disrupted by the absence of my laptop. Happily, the mirror i made of the system mounts on my desktop machine, and i can use my work laptop to access the interface from my lollygag locations. Better than nothing.

Taxes completed in time, after some confusion from the software regarding the multistate taxes. I resent the confusion because the software should have warned us it wasn't what we needed. Pfft. Christine's parents must have had drama every tax time because she's always had huge anxiety around taxes. My family's tradition was to procrastinate. Hm. So, clearly we keep to how we were raised.

At work, my team builds the systems that support authentication into the various services The Whale [1] offers. We're doing work to become compliant with a number of certification systems, most of which require us to amp-up our minimal password management. "Ah-ha," said our security analyst, "why don't we just buy a system that already does this. That would save this money." I in turn shudder at the thought of how much work it would be to integrate with such a thing, if we could find one that meets our requirements. Yesterday evening and this morning i wrote up the requirements for such a theoretic money saving system. I think it makes clear how much integration work is required. I don't know if it made clear some of the maintenance risks. I felt a certain sense of pride as i reviewed the requirements: we've done a great deal of good work.

Yesterday evening's yard mowing was pleasant. I was a little concerned because the east yard seems to be a urban center for ground dwelling bees. I don't think the mowing disrupted them too much. I didn't mow much of the low growing bunch grass that my sister says is a native. We love this grass! I'm delighted how well it integrates with violets. It's not a dense carpet like lawn grasses and it has a coarse texture, but maintenance is low.

A video of the bees from this weekend is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwP9rg2b1QL3aHBJcDJmT1Z3eVk/view?usp=sharing for at least the next week or so (probably months). (Pfft, the low sun doesn't do my shadow any favors.)

Boy, do we need rain. It keeps being promised. I think i'm going to do a flood of the areas between the beds today. Here's an attempt an an ascii diagram to depict how the soil is loose beneath the level of the paths between the beds, so flooding the paths causes draining into the sub soil of the beds. I find that the water gets pulled up into the bed above the path level after some hours. Eventually, i'll come up with something more efficient, but i think the flooding beats a sprinkler at this point.
           
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I'd set my mind to disliking the azaleas up close to the house so i could remove them as a fire hazard. One of them, though, is a glorious deep pink with large blossoms, just out my work window. The salmon color shrub doesn't appeal to me, and one that is cotton candy pink is still only buds. I think i'll be able to want that one gone. It seems propagation of the bright pink one from cuttings would be feasible, so there's that.


[1] Haven't used that pseudonym in a long while. It's due to the scale difference between my original library services employer and the company we merged with, now noted as "largest online public access catalog in the world."