A while ago, I was presented with a little coffee cup filled with coffee beans. Except that the beans were not roasted, and someone had dropped them into some soil inside a little flowerpot inside that coffee cup, and poured some water over all that, and watered them again and again and... the result were a couple of small coffee plant sprouts.
The largest one, meanwhile, has grown to look like this:
Some day, the Internet tells me, this thing might actually bloom and have coffee cherries later on. It also tells me that this will probably take another three or so years... well. I think I'll just go on buying coffee in the meantime, and I won't hold my breath for home-grown! It makes a nice plant, though. Not as decorative (yet) as the Ecuador Purple Chili:
but then purple chili fruit is really hard to beat, decorativeness-wise.
Final fun fact about coffee: The plant belongs to the same plant family as madder... does that explain why plant dyers love their coffee?
It's sunny outside, warming the water in which a sheep fleece is soaking. It's wool-washing season again!
And it is a joy to be outside in that beautiful weather (although wool washing season also means that I am waiting for a good, heavy rain to re-fill my water supply). Plus the view is nice - it's one of my favourite times of the year for looking at our living willow fence: the time when it's all lush and green, but it is still possible to see a bit of its structure through the leaves.
The peach tree that we planted on an espalier last year has actually bloomed this spring, and now it has three or four tiny fruits. I hope they will hang on there until they are nice and big and ripe!
This day today (much like yesterday) has been totally and utterly devoured by the Beast. That is, of course, the book due to come out soon, which has been privately named the Beast for ever and ever... or at least since before I came in on the project.
The fact that it's coming out soon means that it's been typeset, and edited, and we are currently reading the proofs, trying to catch any remaining errors. Which means that Gillian read it all, and I read it all, and we are now making sure that our edits don't contradict or overlap and are getting it all nicely in shape. That, in turn, means another chat session tomorrow, when we will hopefully get through most of the remainder...
At least I got to sit in the wintergarden and look at nice garden flowers while doing the reading. Like this one:
And that one:
And now back to get a little bit more work done today!
It's absolutely amazing what a long weekend (extended by one puny little day!) can do to one's email inbox. Possibly the timing of the long weekend, just after the opening of the Forum registration, has a tiny little bit to do with that... but it's still amazing.
While I had hoped to get a lot more stuff done during the past three days, at least it was very nice and relaxing. Plus a good bit of gardening has been accomplished, including transplanting some green guys who were not doing well in the place they sat, and potting all the rest of the seedlings who needed potting. We now have a little chili plant parade, and I'm very curious to see what will grow out of the seeds of last year's odd chili with the black fruits. It should have been an "Ecuador Purple" just like the others, but it was definitely not.
If you are looking for a decorative chili, by the way, I can recommend that kind - they grow violet fruits that turn to yellow, orange, and finally red. And are quite spicy. (Full disclosure? We give most of the fruits away - they taste nice, especially the purple stage, but I grow them mostly for their looks since we don't eat very spicy foods.)
Our willow fence is also coming along nicely these days, and I hope we'll have the full height that we want (and thus finished the pattern of the fence/hedge) by the end of the summer. The way the shoots are growing, we will definitely have a harvest of basket-making material in winter!
Somehow, these last few hours of the morning have slipped by without me really noticing it. If you saw the person who stole them, please let me know so I can get them back!
And now for your more-or-less random news: The cat is lying right beside me, sleeping. She has a slighly higher need for cuddles and closeness to her humans since we spent the last weekend away, so she wanted her nap close to me.
The garden is exploding into spring growth, with the roses sprouting stems and leaves. The tulips are nearing the end of their bloom cycle, but the lily-of-the-valley is taking up the baton, joining the forget-me-nots and strawberries. The pansies have been blooming for ages anyways, as have the dead-nettles... so the garden is looking quite full of flowers. So full, in fact, that I had to clear space to plant the tomatoes that I set out yesterday!
The internet has also been exploding into spring growth, or so it seems to me. There's lots of stuff to spend some time watching or reading, for example this:
Or, if you prefer reading, Sarah Goslee of the stringpage blogged a link to out-of-print publications put online by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, freely available to read and download. There's 371 publications available as of today, and Sarah has picked out a few of interest already, so visit her place for direct links.
It's finally spring! Though it's still cool outside, the winter garden gets warm enough during the day to sit there, in a T-shirt, and enjoy the sunshine while working. The first crocuses are in bloom, most of our pruning work has been done, and it's really nice to be out in the garden and get the hands dirty again. Even though the garden is small, there is plenty of opportunity to get dirty hands...
And yesterday I put the first tomato and chili seeds into soil for this year. Much of them was seeds that I took from plants myself last year, so I will have an even harder time waiting for them to sprout than usually - since I cannot be sure that they will sprout. (Due to this, I might have put a few more seeds into the ground. Like usual... good thing we have friends and neighbours and family who do not mind a tomato plant or two in case they all grow!)
I had a wonderful, fun summer break, and now I'm returning to work - the Textile Forum is creeping up and needs some attention as well as some other stuff (as usual).
The weather is still beautiful though, more inviting to have ice coffee in the garden than working. It's a good thing I can sit in the open wintergarden for work and at least enjoy the warmth and fresh air outside, and watch the birds eat the half-ripe kernels from the sunflowers! There's whole flocks of them on one flower at some times. The first few chilis are also ripening, and we have already munched quite a lot of tomatoes and mini-cucumbers (melothria). And there's even a melon going to be ripe soon. (The downside of all that garden joy? Being away for some time and not keeping up with the weeding means catch-up work has to be done there as well. Fortunately it can be done while munching tomatoes and cucumbers...)
