Garden, Spice Rack, BBQ

My snow peas are coming in strong now. For a few days they were the only crop grown from seed that I was seeing progress with, which made me nervous. But because I had such a tough time prepping the soil and building the fences with my busy schedule, I wound up building the tomato and snow pea plot before the sunflower and zucchini plot, which got done a few days later. It makes sense then, that a few days later, my sunflowers have begun to sprout. Now just waiting on the zucchinis.

One of my tomato plants is not a tomato, though. I was reprimanding it for its slow growth and encouraging it to catch up with its siblings before I realized its leaf shape is different, as well as its growth pattern. So I have a mystery plant on hand.

Do you remember that spice rack I was weird about? The one where my tarragon bottle got broken? Well now somehow I've lost coriander. But it's kind of okay, because now I've got three on each level, so it balances, and if there were two spices I never used, it was tarragon and coriander, anyway. One of my original roommates said he could mount my spice rack to the wall, but I didn't believe him because that sounded way too incredible to be possible. But he never got around to it, moved out, and I've had my spice rack sitting on my kitchen counter as it always has since then, with it's tragically broken tarragon bottle on display.

But now coriander is gone, and since my roommate moved out, I've been reorganizing the kitchen. I noticed  my counter wall space was crowded by appliances, and I hit a stroke of genius. I managed to open up space by discovering the method to mount my spice rack to the wall!

...It was pretty easy... The spice rack has hooks in the back. I put a couple nails in the wall and placed it against them.

I've got a little barbecue now. Seriously, just a little travel-sized, $20 grill. This is a really unmanly thing to admit, but I've only ever barbecued once. It was during the Summer Program, and through the duration of the overnight program, when staff are required to provide food preparation services, the girls would simply not let me take a lead in making meals... until a barbecue was involved. I was then forced in front of the grill and assumed an expert in the craft. Gender expectations, much?

But it was a grand success. Everyone was complimenting my technique. The process was... exhilarating. Just me, fire, metal, and meat. It felt so natural.

But when I did that, the fire was already lit and pretty much all I did was flip meat, to be honest. Along with barely knowing how to bbq, I also barely know how to make a fire (that also came up during Summer Program, I got asked to make a fire with no tools when I'd never made one before. I managed it, but retelling the story, I was told I'd gone through "every evolution stage of man")

So I was attempting to light the fire yesterday, but I couldn't make anything long-lasting enough to make food with. I did it in the dead of night, one part because my internal clock is reversed and I'm used to being up during that time, and the other part because I don't want my grill-expert neighbour to catch me struggling to make fire. Serious blows to my man-cred if that happens.

I missed the I Choose Dign!ty rally this year. This is Extend-a-Family's march to City Hall, where everyone who feels short-changed on their due respect from community can join together to choose dignity. After the march, at City Hall there are speeches from those on the topic of dignity, there are the Dignity Dancers, and there is a  Fo' Cheesy van that give out free grilled cheese sandwiches.

The past few years I have really hammed it up and thrown down to get in every bit of promotional material I can at this rally. People mention to me all the time that they've seen in this ad or that, but this year I couldn't muscle my way in. RIP my fame.

My clock's broken. Actually kind of gloomy about it. 4 years ago I bought it at Dollarama and it has since given me only accurate time. Recently however, it has developed a sticking spot where it goes backward in time one second per minute before progressing naturally. Before stopping it today, this collective loss in time set it back a full 45 minutes.