My sleeping bag and I are off to a retreat at Camp Fraser for the weekend. Here are the photos from last year’s retreat, when I saw a beaver, a fox, and a snake during an early morning hike and got to try a zipline for the first time. Hopefully the rain being forecast will hold back while I’m outdoors, because I intend to be up with the sun to try and catch that beaver on camera tomorrow morning.
Green Thumb Update
It’s been a couple of years since I started getting into plants (see Growing a Green Thumb), and it’s high time for an update for those of you interested in tiny-apartment gardening.
First, the deaths: the old African Violet is gone, by my own fault — I overwatered it in the wrong way, pouring directly over the stem rather than into the saucer. The Whole Foods kalanchoes have also passed on, having fallen victim to a disaster of the “cat bumping into unsteady plant stand and spilling plants and pots and soil all over the carpet and bed” variety. I decided against rerooting after finding that kalanchoes are poisonous to cats. (A small pot of cuttings does continue to survive with Amy.)
The “Admiral” Norfolk Island Pine is still around, repotted in a larger, sturdier 13″ plastic pot with lots of Miracle Gro Moisture Control soil. I was a bit worried that the stress of moving from its old pot would retard its growth, but quite the opposite, the Admiral has shot up, sprouting a new branch and lengthening its old ones with bright, green, needly shoots. I also attempted to correct its asymmetric angle of growth in repotting, correcting the base angle of the trunk to vertical, and the new shoot now grows in the proper direction. Daily rotation and spraying are now part of the Admiral’s routine.
I’ve also rerooted a few coleus cuttings from Amy in a terra cotta pot. Coleus is a lively grower, propagating easily from cuttings and shooting up like crazy with lots of watering and sunlight. Initial growings proved to be rather unwieldy and vinelike, but subsequent propagated generations have been treated with strict pruning and daily rotation to even things out. Already the coleus you see in the photos above (from a month ago) is twice that height. As you can see from this photo (also above), I’ve stuck a few coleus cuttings into the Norfolk Island Pine’s pot, sharing the soil and adding a bit of variety.
Also from Amy, I have a lettuce leaf basil plant in a clay pot, whose fragrant leaves have made for delicious salads and stir fries. (There was an older basil last year which survived for a few months, but was later taken over by scale bugs, so I had to throw it out.) This basil plant seems to be getting past its prime, though, browning away in its lower regions and not growing new leaves quite as fast as I would like. I tried rerooting a basil cutting in water and replanting it in the same pot, but its performance so far has been lackluster. It may be time for this one to retire soon, perhaps in a last, mournful garlic basil chicken stir fry.
And finally, my pride and joy, a new African violet (also from Amy) which, with careful tending and infrequent watering, has bloomed into a forest of lovely, glittery lavender flowers. It took about a month for all of them to come out, and they’re just past their peak — but with a few buds still forming to replenish the bloom. I’d say this baby still has a good month of flowers left on it before they wither and drop off. You can watch the progress of the bloom in my African Violet Photoset.
Over the summer, I’m considering the feasibility of a ledge planter to get some stuff out into the sun. I’m not sure what I want to put in there yet. Also, there’s a jar of simple wheat grass for Pandora to nibble on, for her digestion, but that’s not really worth photographing.
Deodorants of my Life
Longtime readers of this journal may remember a long-ago admission of reliance on women’s deodorant for my underarms. This was back in the Philippines, where, at the time, men’s deodorant shelves were dominated by strong, over-perfumed roll-ons, without any milder powder-fresh scents for those desiring not to smell like badly fermented musk. That has changed since I came to America and discovered Old Spice Red Zone Original Scent. The smell of it is perfect for me: mild, powdery with only a tiny hint of sharper scent, mostly “matte” rather than “gloss.”
My only small regret: it does not come as a roll-on. I once made a hobby of collecting roll-on balls in my college days, prying them loose from the deodorant bottles and thoroughly washing them so I could bounce them between the pillars of the university halls on idle days. Solid sticks offer no such pleasure.
In summary, no more women’s deodorant for me. I’m an Old Spice man now. (I’m also looking into the feasibility of adding Burt’s Bees and Geritol to my routine, to supplement my daily use of Kaminomoto. But that is a topic for some other time.)
LOST Notes: Dave and SOS
Hurley at the edge of the cliff, wondering if he should jump, brought to mind the chapter in Lord of the Flies where Piggy is thrown off a cliff after being hit by a rock loosed by Roger. I guess if you want to carry the parallelism farther, Hurley is Piggy, Dave is the rock, and Roger is the Dharma Initiative. Or something.
Dave, at least at the mental institution, is obviously Hurley’s hallucination, and is not real; as made clear by the final reveal scene where Libby watches Hurley put his arm around empty air for a photo. Dave on the Island, however, may be an actual physical embodiment of a ghost from Hurley’s mind, just like Jack’s father and Kate’s horse. He did throw coconuts at Hurley. But the episode leaves that question unanswered, as there were no other witnesses — unlike Kate’s horse, which was also seen by Sawyer.
The “it’s all a Hurley fantasy” angle is a red herring. I doubt the producers of LOST would pull a Saint Elsewhere on their viewers, anymore than they would go with the Purgatory theory.
The Rose/Bernard back story was a bit disappointing to me. I was hoping for a much longer marriage history stretching back to the turbulent eras of the civil rights struggle, or perhaps a missionary/church-based past to explain the depth of Rose’s Christian faith. The “faith healer” subplot did work in the grander scheme of the story, on the same level as Claire’s alarmed psychic, obliquely pointing to the Island as an ultimate transcendent destination which will bring healing and final answers.
The Rose/Bernard conflict — peace and faith versus dissatisfaction and the need to be doing something — made me think of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus for some reason. Also note that Bernard’s unfinished SOS sign with the two piles of rocks formed a sad face looking out from the beach to the sea.
While jokes were bandied about that Eko might be building a church, it turns out he really is — assuming Charlie wasn’t joking. It’s becoming increasingly clear that there are certain survivors — persons of faith, perhaps, like Rose and Locke? — who may never want to leave the island, and are now settling in for the long term.
Oh, and Henry Gale is an Other.
Too lazy to provide more links. Just peruse the LOST spoilers at Spoilerfix and The Tail Section if you want more juicy info.
Squirrel is Watching You
Snapped this nut-munching rodent on the Hill, moments after a dog chased him up a tree. (Hat tip to Wyclif for the title idea.)
Update: Another of my squirrel photos from the weekend is Photo of the Day on DCist.
Bird and Capitol
This bird was perched atop a lamp just long enough for me to get three photos of varying zoom lengths and compositions. So, two questions, one for the pro photogs, and one for the seasoned bird watchers: which of the three compositions do you like best, and what kind of bird is it? It was gray and brown, with a long tail, and a vivid white stripe on each wing.
Update: Looks like it’s a Northern Mockingbird. Hat tip to HoWeCogitate.
Lamp, Fence, and Bollard With Tulips
(IMG_6181.JPG, uploaded by brownpau.)
I never thought I’d see these things all together in such harmony and balance. Truly, we live in interesting times.
Two Spring Weekends
Last weekend was graced by a visit from Amy. We checked out exhibits of Frans Van Mieris, Grant Wood, and Hokusai. Not too often do we get to see two famous historic visiting works in a weekend, but we did: American Gothic and The Great Wave. We also rambled around the Tidal Basin to see the last of the cherry blossoms.
(Palm Sunday also included the slightly momentous event of my coming forward and declaring full membership with my church. It turns out I’d been under watchcare fellowship all this time and forgotten about it, so when some old time members reminded me, I said I’d do it on Palm Sunday, the fourth year to the day since I first came to First Baptist.)
Today, after Easter worship (and a sermon from our pastor about Gnostics, heresies, Incarnation, and Resurrection), I strolled by the National Geographic Museum to gawk at the papyrus fragments from the Codex Tchacos, most recently famous for containing the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. After a lunch at home of spinach-and-tuna salad — and a nap with Pandora curled up beside me — I set out to get some exercise, geek out a bit at NASM, and get some photos of flowers, squirrels, tourists, and the Capitol.
Easter 2006
(Stained glass window from First Baptist DC, showing John 20, where the resurrected Jesus reveals himself to Mary Magdalene. In his right hand is a shovel, which is why she thought he was the gardener. Genesis readers will note that Adam was a “gardener” too.)
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead, with the promise of rising for all who answer his call. Christos aneste! Kids, enjoy your Easter Egg hunts, and pastors, enjoy your higher-than-usual church attendance. May the jump in attendance stay for coming weeks, and may all your eggs be hunted.
On Neal H. Cruz and the Bible
It’s Holy Week in the Philippines, and you know what that means? That’s right, it’s time for Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Neal H. Cruz’s Annual Attack on The Bible! I’ve seen him re-issuing this same column with little variation, pretty much every single year, using the same tired old straw-man arguments. It annoys me to no end that each year, his editors let such blatant errors through their filters. (On the other hand, this is the same newspaper which let Leah Salterio republish the Art Bell email hoax without even a cursory web search, so I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.) I guess it’s about time someone addressed the various fallacies Cruz trots out annually. (I hesitate to call this a “Fisking,” as some of the cool kids call it, so I will just say that this is a punctilious critique.)
[Continued after the jump, and wow, this is my first time actually using a jump because an entry is so long.]