Garden mysteries

Gardening is my default activity in the summer. After work or on the weekends, it's the first thing I start doing, and I'll always do it before home repair or sewing or practicing Spanish (but I do make time for laundry and Star Trek. I'm not a heathen.) As a result, my gardens are looking great. June's combo of rain and warm weather means that everything is growing like mad, but most plants aren't fruiting yet, so there's not actually much to eat yet.

Every year, you get a few "volunteer" plants, which are the name for plants that were unexpected results of last year's crops self-seeding. Since these seeds are often blown around, and I rotate crops, things come up in unexpected places. This year I not only have volunteers, I have mysteries. I've encountered several plants that don't seem to be weeds - you can usually recognize weeds because when you have one, you have a hundred. These mysteries are compounded by the fact that my mother did some of my planting, and it's possible that she put in things but didn't tell me.

I've got my eye on three mystery plants.

I have three of these plants. They are about two feet high, with huge, round leaves on a single stem. They are in a bed that housed watermelon, zinnias, and garlic last year, but they are definitely not one of those.

 I have a single specimen of this plant, which is about 18" high, with thin, wispy leaves, and several stems towering above a base of smaller stems.

This plant is the most puzzling. It is in the exact location where I planted an echinacea root this spring. Echinacea are small round plants, less than two feet high, with purpely-red blossoms. Instead, I have an enormous, meter-high plant with white-purple furled flowers. I highly suspect that the garden company sold me the wrong root. It's like planting a pumpkin seed and getting a tomato.

My informal garden advising committee is my last hope. If they can't identify the plants before they go to seed, then I may have to kill them, because because that's when a weed is not just an unwanted plant but a menace.

So long, San Francisco (at least temporarily)

In May, I visited my brother and his family, but I had so much fun I never got around to posting, so this is a retrospective piece. My annual visits to the Bay area are something I look forward to, but my brother and his family will be traveling for the next year, so this was a chance to see them and say a temporary good-bye to SF. I love hanging out in the city and soaking up the wearing-a-hoodie, using-a-scooter, coder vibe, which is so different than the suit-wearing, policy wonk culture in DC.

We made stuffed-crust pizza. It was my first try, and my advice to myself for next time: you can't use too much cheese.

My niece is as tall as me. She is clearly not done growing, so very soon I will be the shortest family member, at least until the next generation has kids.

K presented a poster about for her class interview-a-scientist project. She prepared excellent questions and then recorded and transcribed the interview. From my research, I know how mind-numbing it can be to transcribe conversations.

I took a day trip to Angel Island, which involved the subway, a tram, and a ferry ride.

Angel Island was once used to process immigrants, aka the Ellis Island of the West. Because of anti-Chinese legislation, potential Chinese immigrants could spend weeks or ever months in the barracks, waiting to found out if they would be permitted to enter the US. Some of them carved poetry about loneliness and home on the walls.

It was a pretty sobering reminder of how things used to be, and tragically, how thing still are for many people trying to immigrate to the US.

They have a tough exercise routine at my brother's house.  A medium-sized boy clings to you, and you try to do everything you can to remove him. I managed one session, plus one session of my brother's "Oh, you are bored? Let's do as many sit-ups and push-ups as we can!" routine.

Loaner cat

When both of my pets died this spring, I was sad not only because they were gone, but also because I'm not planning to have any pets for a while. I want to be able to travel more easily in about five years, and any pets I adopt would still be around then. I miss having animals in my life, but lobbying my friends to get pets didn't work.

However, I'm pleased to introduce my loaner cat, Wesley! I turns out that you can just go to the library and check cats out, although you can't renew because there's always a wait list. I jest, of course. Wesley normally lives with my brother and sister-in-law, and since they are planning to take their two lovely children and travel for a year, Wesley needed a temporary home. He only arrived on Monday, so he's still in the "Where the hell did I end up?" phase, warily watching me, but he'll occasionally let me pet him, and he has already staked out his favorite chair for naps.

Garden love

I've been delinquent in posting, without any real excuse. To help fill the gap, here's a photo of something that's currently bringing me a lot of happiness - my garden.

The picture doesn't do it justice. So many things are blooming: lavender, pansies, dianthus (carnations), roses, day lilies, foxglove, and moss roses. The lavender is a big mass of purple and green, lazily swarming with happy bees. Most mornings before work I go out and pull a handful of weeds, sometimes just to have an excuse to look at all the lovely plants and admire them.