Much of the effort in the latter part of this item came from Dave, who put together the new raised bed, ordered the dirt, and shovelled it from the front yard into the bed out the back. I, meanwhile, did the also important task of standing and pointing. Today I’ve planted out six cherry tomatoes, some lettuce, and flowers for decoration and bee-attracting. I’m also continuing my ten-year-long futile effort to grow basil. Mum once gave me some great gardening advice, which was, “Some things will always die, so plant lots of things”. I’ve mostly had luck with this approach but for some reason I’m never able to keep basil alive no matter how much I plant. I used to have a theory that it tasted too good to all the bugs.
This of course reminds me of a conversation I had with friends in Canberra, some of scientific bent, about how all my basil and chillies were being eaten. I pondered why the bugs didn’t find them too hot to eat. One girl looked at me like I was a Complete Moron, and to her credit, very politely said, “You know they don’t have human taste buds, don’t you?” This is what happens when you think like me, not like a scientist.
I also went on holiday with this group once. It was quite entertaining... we were at the Tassie coast and I was admiring huge rocks I thought looked like giant’s feet torn off at the shins, and they’d be getting excited about tessellated pavement. Still, I highly recommend holidaying with a trained geologist. They have a completely different way of seeing the landscape, and you can learn all sorts of interesting facts without having to actually do the geology study yourself.
I am also reminded here of a character in a Tad Williams series called Otherland. He’s one of a group stuck in a series of virtual reality worlds. With his liberal arts training he’s able to recognize the origins of many, for example those based on Greek mythology. He is also completely useless at being able to survive, having no actual practical skills. At that point I suspected Tad was also of the “rocks look like giant feet” way of thinking. I'm quite aware I'm a useless person to get lost with, given the not very helpful combination of (a) terrible sense of direction and (b) extremely vivid imagination. Doom!
Also in the garden today I was admiring this, my first rose of the season.
I also saw a pigeon who was so terrified by our new scarecrow that he waddled a full four steps out of his way to go around it.
