Looking at the computer hurts my head. Typing on the computer hurts my hands. But weaving this random weave basket from the Virginia creeper vines in the Back Forty was a very pleasant activity yesterday! I’ll finish another that I started in a few minutes.

Um, remember my little plan to go natural for menopause? I’m getting hammered by migraines every night, beginning with headaches every afternoon. Plus, my new laptop is all boogered up somehow - today we’ll have to back up the files and reset it to factory settings. I’m on Sandy’s PC while he sleeps late.

I’m going to try to plant some peas and lettuce now that I have a row cover, and do a little more cardboard mulching. Unfortunately I can’t do much because last weekend’s work set my hands back a few weeks in recovery. Yes, that’s right, I said handS, plural.

So I hope that this weekend gets better. I don’t feel very positive right now but after I finish my little pot of coffee I hope that the world will look brighter and that I’ll be able to stand the light.

Fabulous website! Check out the Adobe Photoshop Cook video and the Wendell Berry poem on the left, one of my favorites.

The Good Farm Movement: celebrating the agrarian avant-garde: the art activist antagonist, the forward farmer preserver, the urban eater educator.

Divided and replanted about three dozen garlic youngsters sprouted from some forgotten garlic from 2 years ago. I think that they are a kind of hardneck, so I’ll have scapes in May if that’s the case! If not, they are silverskin, which I like just fine.

Found some parsley I’d forgotten about too. It was hidden by a wicked infestation of English ivy that is going to be my major nemesis this year, I’m afraid. However, that parsley survived the cold much better than the other parsley did, so there you go. Nothing is totally good or evil in the garden. Except poison oak and ivy. Haven’t found a virtue for them yet.

I ordered a few seeds and some Reemay from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange today. I realized that I will really need to do the tunnels this year to protect my seedlings from critters. I ordered a lettuce mix of sixty varieties (whee! I just love those mystery mixes), Nankeen cotton, which is a coppery brown, and Cossack pineapple ground cherries. Anne-Marie gave me a few seeds - she had loads of different pepper, eggplant, and tomato seeds but I am not starting seeds indoors this year. I took a few pumpkin, cucumber, and lime and Genovese basil seeds.

I laid down cardboard on the paths where weeds tend to come up and Sandy put down new pine needles. We switched to pine needles last year when a flood ran through the Back Forty and washed all the wood chips that I’d just busted my ass to put down to the side of the house. Later we had another flood and the pine needles stayed put, and it makes Sandy happier about the back yard, so unless I see a real decline in the soil we’ll keep using the pine needles. I’m trying to decide whether to use wheat straw or compost as mulch for the vegetable beds. I’d have to buy the compost since I don’t have enough. Maybe I’ll do both to see which is better.

Transplanted some feverfew volunteers to the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I send my toughest invaders up there, as long as they are pretty.

I am achy and sore, but this weekend’s work made me happy. Ask me that around 7 a.m. and see if you get the same answer.

My buddy Anne-Marie and her housemate Steve moved recently into a house near downtown Greensboro with a large sunny lot and muscadine grapevines. They moved their urban chicken coop over there, started a small winter plot with a cold frame, and are embarking upon establishing a real urban homestead. Later they plan to put in beehives and start a CSA.

Sandy and I went over there this afternoon and they gave us half a dozen eggs and we swapped some seeds. I am terribly jealous of all the space they have, but not of the initial work they’ll have to put in to build up the soil health. It took us a long time, working step by step inch by inch, to develop our back yard into a small food garden, and we still have work to do! But it was one of the most satisfying things I have done in my life.

Here’s a chance to watch a couple start from scratch: they’ve started a website called Locavore Continuum. Give ‘em some love, y’all.

We are all thrilled here in central North Carolina because the weekend’s highs are supposed to be in the 50s-60s. I’m going to get out into the Back Forty this weekend, do some cleanup left over from last year, and prepare some beds for spring planting. I have heavy wire hoops in place over a few beds for plastic and Reemay. Maybe I’ll buy some and try to do some salad greens in the winter beds.

Sandy and I are cooking together now on weekends. Last Sunday I made goat cheese omelets, then he joined me in the kitchen where I was making spaghetti sauce for the coming week, and I guided him through making beef stew in the slow cooker. Most of the ingredients were local and/or organic.

Later that evening, we made a scallop pasta dish that I don’t have a recipe for - it is one of those dishes that has developed through the years out of ideas from other recipes. We marinated the scallops in olive oil, lime juice, and garlic, sauteed broccoli florets and sweet onions in some of the marinade, added a cube of frozen basil and pine nuts, added the scallops, then topped it off with feta and parmesan cheese. This is a dish that we save for special occasions.

I turned 49 years old on Ash Wednesday, and celebrated it on Facebook all day by posting the things that I would give up for Lent, which included:

sobbing in my office
crack
watching NASCAR
fried butter
Bud Light
running from the FBI
saying the word “durn”
kumquats
self-denial
pretending that your behavior is not slightly disturbing

I could have gone on like this all day every day. In real life, however, I am giving up birth control pills. We’ll see how THAT goes after 30 years of estrogen supplements! What are you giving up for Lent?

Background finished. Maybe looking at this will jumpstart me to begin the applique on the cardoon flower, stalk, and stems, which is my next step. Then I’ll begin stitching the “thistle” part.

Right now, I’m going home at night and reading about art and quilting and embroidery instead of doing it. But it’s all good. I just need to break out of this soon.

This Saturday we woke up to snow on the ground. Again. Every frickin Friday for the past three weeks it’s been some kind of frozen weather. At least we don’t have three feet like our neighbors to the north. But everyone over the age of 12 seems to be pretty much sick of it around here.

Last Saturday the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market was closed for the second Saturday in a row, and it really should not have been. The roads were not bad. So Donna Myers and Greensborough Coffee collaborated to host a “Fair Weather Farmers Market” on State St. on Sunday. Sandy and I went and purchased cheese, beef, and eggs. It was a great idea that I believe they are planning to do again, but on weekdays when I can’t go.

I’ve been very lazy at home this week. Busy at work, though. We’re in the middle of graduate school application review and course scheduling for next year. I come home and tend to be in bed by 8:30 or 9 p.m.! I don’t quite know what’s up with that, but I figure that I must need it. A lot of times I am content to lay there, hug Theo, and just let my mind drift. Or if I fall asleep, I wake up in the middle of the night and read for a while. I attribute this to the prolonged cold weather and also my sinus infection, which is much better but probably has run me down quite a bit despite all the vitamins and neti pots and Mucinex.

So I’m pretty boring right now, don’t have much to say. I’ll post the latest update on my embroidery later.

An interesting group on Facebook has organized - Join the Coffee Party Movement. They are quite seriously developing a movement for progressives. I recently ditched the Democrats so I’ll follow this to see if they actually get something going. The Green Party lost me when they cost Al the election in 2000. I’d like to see a strong grass roots movement of something to counteract the Tea Party crazies. I assumed that the tea partiers would crash and burn under their own ridiculous paranoia, but in the same country where Dubya was elected twice I should know better. Americans are such sheep. The majority of us want to be told what to think for convenience’s sake.

Sandy and I will probably head down to our neighborhood corner bar, College Hill Sundries, for the first time in a long, long time later this afternoon. They are having a fundraiser for Save College Hill. We have a great lawyer for our side, but of course we need to pay him. And the signs and flyers all cost money too, but I believe that it has all been money well spent. I just wish that our city councilperson, Zach Matheny, would advocate for his constituents in this matter. By all indications, he might even vote for the developer, which would be a real blow for true democracy, considering that the vast majority of residents oppose this particular development and he knows it. I think that he will definitely be voted out if he doesn’t vote on our side, because the rest of the neighborhoods in his district are watching too. One can only hope that he will pay attention and do the right thing.

Latest addiction: Mahjong Titans, that came with my Windows 7 games. Augggghhh. What a time waster.

Thinking about the garden for this year. Cherokee purple tomatoes, lots of butterbeans and peas again, Choppee okra if I can get it past the rabbit, hot and sweet peppers in pots. Cotton - Erlene’s green and Nanking, a copper colored one, both from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Garlic and leeks. I believe that I’ll buy tomato and pepper plants from Handance Farm this year instead of growing from seed. This will be the first year in a long long time that I have not started seeds indoors. I will be able to harvest my asparagus if it survives the cold and the weeds I let grow in it this year. I have enjoyed Tuscan kale all winter, but now with the snow covering everything for so long the rabbit has eaten the rest of it.

The flock of robins that showed up yesterday is totally confused. They thought that they left the snow behind. They bombed my car with bird crap yesterday to the point that I could not possibly drive it to the car wash without washing it first. I mean, it is covered. At least maybe this snow will soften it up so that I can sponge it off when the weather warms above freezing and then I’m parking on the street for a while, out from under the tree. Damn birds. It’s a good thing that I don’t need to drive this car often.

Okay, time to go to the market and then I promised myself some art time.

Step 2 - stitched the outline of the design, stitched the layers down with random stitches, and whipped stitch around the edges.

This time my place of work closed for the entire day and announced it before we all left for work. I woke up earlier than usual, though. Any other day I’d be lolling in bed, groaning about leaving my warm cocoon. We’re getting a slick coating of ice over this snow now. Bad winter weather in North Carolina usually means freezing rain. We don’t get snow as often as ice. Today we’re getting both.

I’m not especially happy, although I don’t mind having a day off. It’s that I’m bored, and that I’d like to go to the farmers’ market tomorrow morning, and even if it is open this crappy freezing rain is supposed to last through tomorrow. And there’s an artist talk and opening reception at Weatherspoon Art Museum tonight that I’d like to attend. It’s just walking distance around the corner from me, but if the roads are dangerous I’m afraid that they will cancel and the artist will go home. His name is Leonardo Drew and he uses paper and found objects in sculpture and assemblage. It is not often that I am actually interested in an artist at Weatherspoon, but I saw an installation going up on Wednesday and it looks fascinating.

Sandy left for work about thirty minutes ago and I hope that his journey is safe there and back tonight at 7 pm. At least he doesn’t work second shift any more.

I think that I’ll have my own art retreat day right here. I’ll polish off the leftovers from this week for meals, and let the cooking and housecleaning go. Play my new Lyle Lovett CD, listen to podcasts, This American Life, and Anne of Avonlea. Take a long hot bath and inhale some steam. During and in between, I’ll be stitching and painting and maybe bookbinding. I started this project this morning. I’ll be playing with this one, really trying to let myself go wild. The first step is to stitch the outline of the cardoon flower over these layers of painted fabric and cheesecloth, then I’ll tear this water-soluable paper away and add fabric pieces, stitching, and beads.