October 16th, 2008
Sunshine and vapor rub
Today I’m home sick. Somewhere along with the weather changes and brief slowdown (read: not crazy busy) at work, I got a fever and my throat decided to close up shop for a couple days.
So this morning I spent a few minutes sitting in the sun out on my balcony with a cup of rooibos tea while talking to my plants. Now I am bundled up at the PC with another cup of rooibos, a pot of okayu, and vapor rub on my throat (but no E, unfortunately). What you get is a day of me tidying up my photography folder and another one of my seasonal horticulture updates.
This is my recently acquired cranberry bush. I know it’s diminutive and poorly shaped, but I’m confident that a larger pot, aggressive picking, and a little fertilizer will make for a whole new bush next season.
You probably haven’t seen my pineapple in a while, well it seems that leaving it out on the balcony all summer was a really good thing. It’s doubled in size this season and really is begging for a transplant to a bigger pot. I’ve been told that unfortunately the moderate Tokyo climate isn’t warm enough for it to bear fruit, but we definitely have a second stalk coming out from the side here, so before it gets much cooler I think I’m going to gamble a split and move to a bigger pot.
Lastly, this is my first ever Japanese pumpkin, Punki. A dearth of arable land and as such pumpkins in general usually drives the price on gourds of this size upwards of thirty-five dollars, but I got a deal from a florist trying to recoup some of his fall window display investment on this healthy-looking guy for about twenty bucks. I don’t have a pumpkin knife and doubt I could find one, so this weekend at carving time I think I may take the Tim Taylor approach and go at it with my power drill. (Ha, ha, you think I’m kidding.)
Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance podcast is running in the background, and I’m already thinking about next year’s trip to Ibiza. But I have totally unprepared trip to Austria in ten days, so it’s time to go hostel hunting in Vienna.
