And so, one of the major projects this year has been working on bringing my gardens back into line. It’s part of an overall arc of making my life more suitable for me, but this is a part that has borne some literal fruit. Hereafter are notes and pictures on projects, and I can’t promise you it is enthralling, but I am pleased with my progress and garden aficionados and friends will certainly find glad things here, even if it’s just “I’m happy you were able to do something you wanted to do.”

Some before pictures can be seen, with comments, in this gallery; there are pictures from both 2008 and 2010. The sad thing is that there was such bad gardening weather (since 2007, actually) (and other things that severely impeded my life) that the recovery work in 2008 was completely undone and had to be redone, so the pictures from 2008 are almost valid for 2010, as well. Again, the 2010 pictures were taken with a video camera.

Here is a 10-ish minute video I did after more work had progressed, thinking that it might be easier given the fraked up nature of our technology, but the truth is that this experiment merely revealed to me that Michael’s computer is no longer talking reliable to the internets. The only thing it will upload is .jpg’s to Facebook. Anyway, the meandering commences below:

And here are some links I’ve kept as some garden research–you know, that medieval gardening thing I like so well:

http://www.quidplura.com/?p=12
http://www.prebendal-manor.demon.co.uk/medieval_gardens.htm
http://library.wur.nl/speccol/intro.html
http://www.herbvideos.com/medi.htm
http://www.gatewaygardenstrust.org/fe/master.asp?n1=164&n2=352&n3=375
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/m_garden/overview_MedievalGardens.html illustration of boarded bed.
http://www.larsdatter.com/gardens.htm
http://classes.bnf.fr/ema/feuils/crescens/feuille/grand/865.htm
http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Langham/Langham_Letter.pdf
http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/medievalgardens.htm
http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/gardens/article3495940.ece

Since the film, I’ve filled in the raised bed and now have to break up the dirt pile by the garage and move it to fill the area excavated for the raised bed. In fact, I’m slightly gimpy today from the digging effort of moving the bed. I’m toying with the idea of a turf seat for the yard, nd a wattle fence. We’ll see what happens.

My camera remains gone. I am down to using the video camera for shots, which, even at it’s highest setting, takes crappy stills, and it only works well with Micheal’s desk top. Micheal’s desktop, when it is on, is the only one that can be hooked up to the internet. And when Micheal’s home, he’s the one using his desk top. And he’s done something further to it, I don’t know what, that prevents it from downloading applets, making my ability to upload photos to my gallery program very difficult. As in, I can’t do it straight from the computer unless I do it one photo at a time.

Needless to say, I have not been on the internet in a way that furthers any goal of mine very much at all this past week.

My frustration level is very high.

Bye Bye Blue Dress! and other costume-y musings.
The dress to the right is still intact, but maybe not for much longer. I have plenty basic garb, including crappy working garb, and I don’t really need to keep this dress anymore. This (and an ancient and honorable middle eastern set that is falling apart) nearly did not come back from Pennsic with me. Since my earliest days as a scribe, I have had a blue cotehardie, and I often painted a stylized me on scrolls in that blue cotehardie. This is the second version. I bought replacement material to make a new one a long time ago, some nice blue linen. And I noticed that, since I last wore this dress in January, the permanent tie* is too big. I can adjust it down and get more use out of it, but I have never really liked this dress. I’m torn between refashioning it into several bags and wraps for packing protection or giving it to the chatelaine’s office for use as emergency or loaner garb. I also noticed another sort of weird possibility for it at Pennsic; I hung it for drying and airing from one of the posts in the carport, and it actually worked kind of well as a banner. Odd, eh? but it was a nice bit of innocuous draping against the white wall, and one that I did not have so much time in making invested that I would be worried about rain or any such thing.

But, anyway, the thing I want to tell myself is this: it’s time to make a new blue cotehardie.

The first sort of sewing work I will do, however, is complete the outfit I bought from Felix Needleworthy. I’ve purchased a dress, in the style of the dresses in the center bottom picture on Felix’s index page, in a material similar to the black and gold that the gentleman to the far right is wearing. (That I would buy black and gold is such a surprise, eh?) He did provide a black peasant skirt with it, but I immediately repurposed that for a day-to-night Pennsic outfit–linen shirt in the day with appropriate accessories for Middle Eastern, and a bodice (that I finally finished just because it would work with the peasant skirt, thus finally refashioning the outfit that also previously contained the Linen Kirtle From Hell) and switch of accessories for use at night. I have a black cotton velvet skirt that will work for this outfit; it was made with the idea in mind that it would serve as part of an outfit, and can be seen in this old picture. I may put some ribbon at the hem to make it a little more Tudorish. The thing I like about this base dress style, however, is that it can be pushed into the Elizabethan era, as in the pictures, but it can also be pushed into the earlier Tudor era. This page shows the More family portrait in several of its incarnations; a number of the women are wearing front opening dresses without stomachers or the whole overdress that Catherine of Aragon wears (look close, she is wearing 4 layers; I’ve often wondered if the “white thing” [as seen in the More portraits] is a strip of linen pinned to layer 3 to somehow support the sleeves, because if these are examples of the dresses that can be worn under the fourth layer, those big fur bells are hugely impractical and may not be actual parts of the dress. But in any ebvent, Catherine is wearing some kind of front opening dress under her outer layer.). As much as I love the bell sleeve, however, I think I am going to do the sleeves and hood in the style of Holbein’s portrait of Lady Lee, Elizabeth Seymour. Catherine Parr also has the bag like sleeve on a red loose gown. While they won’t be a perfect sleeve match as in these portraits, they will be appropriate. I will also need to make a stomacher and a chemise. I don’t think I’m going to do a collared partlet, but I may do a simple partlet if I have time. Maybe. Michael so loves to see the girls on view.

In other costuming news, I have managed to complete several small things, but now need to revamp some things, too. First on the refurb line is going to be the hemp underdress Margaret gave me; I love that dress, so airy for Pennsic, but the seams are falling apart. But that is on the Pennsic Pre Planning List, and so I’ll save that discussion for anopther time. There’s already plenty of costumiliocious goodness in this entry!

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*Permanent tie: I hate having to ask people to tie me into my dress. I try to adjust the back of the dress so that I can have it tied and still slip in and out of it. This is a series of ties and knots that just stays in place but can be adjusted with your body shape. Alternately, I can put in a spiral lace in that is long enough to tie myself, but that takes a lot of lace that you then have to hide under the dress.

It was a fairly pleasant Pennsic. The heat was brutal, and I had to drag around a deep cycle marine battery to run the cpap. Oh, and I spent the night in the hospital d/t a mysterious visual disturbance, but the time I was there was during the worst heat, and I got to be a health care princess in air conditioning during the worst heat of the 2 weeks of Pennsic, getting examined and examined by students, interns, and residents who rarely get to treat the essentially healthy and/or women and/or the under-65 set (much less someone who is all three), and given such a thorough examination that I can now say I know what my brains look like, I’ve seen all angles of my eyeballs and optic nerves, I don’t have diabeties, uncontrolled hypertension, detatched retina, MRCA, syphillis, cancers of the eye or brain, stroke and a whole host of other injuries, disorders, or infectious diseases. Whee! So I was not really distressed to be in the hospital; nearly everyone was kind and I wasn’t really sick, I was just a puzzlement and an opportunity. And I was in the a/c.

I think that for next year, I am actually going to have to make myself a little activity planner, and make myself be an early riser. Much of what I wanted to do at Pennsic this year was waysided by my need to walk a lot, and delaying these walks until about 9 AM or so, often times, starting later. I have started the post Pennsic planner, but it’s in bits and pieces right now. Truth be told, and at least in terms of material goods, I don’t have a whole lot to do based on solving some issue of discomfort. The only thing that was really unhappy for me was the effort needed to feed myself, which always requires work and adjustment. After about 5 days of cooking under field conditions, it became so tiresome that I didn’t want to do it any more. Furthermore, the time it takes to go back to camp to eat and then walk back up top was significant enough for me this war that my lunch was often something I bought in the food court. I didn’t really want to do that, but it’s the way it worked out.

Not so much in terms of parties this year; it was all pretty subdued. I always enjoy the party at Settmoor Swamp, and Midrealm Royal party was nice for the brief time I was there. Other than that, I found I enjoyed just going for a second walk after dark more than any party I popped into.

Now, I am tired. All is well, we are home safe, and better reporting will come after I’ve had more rest. Maybe some of my bad pictures, too: still without my proper camera.

pardon the lack of capitals; i am composing on my phone. capital letters are too much a bother to do; it interupts the flow of my thoughts.

in a few days, i will have the opportunity to put pictures into my entries, but, alas, they are not of sharp quality; i have had to use my video camera these last weeks, because i cannot, for the life of me, find my regular camera.

thing the first:

it’s time for the call for pennsic postcards. if you want a postcard from pennsic, email me at merouda @ hotmail dot com–unless you have a better email address for me–and include the address you want me to use.

thing the second:

i have not spoken much about my health lately, in part, because i know how boring that can get. however, about august of last year, my dosage of synthroid got reduced. gah, that is right, reduced. if you know anything about hypothyroidism, you know what happened next.

if you don’t, i will tell you now: i gained 20 lbs. in a month. i wonder sometimes if that sudden increase had something to do with the mystery injury (because of the sudden increased demand on the legs), but, like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop, the world may never know. in any event, there i was, standing in the clinic and feeling like i was going to have to shake the resident to get her to notice that a) i had gain too much too fast and b) make a referral to the lifestyle clinic, redirecting the physician to my issue over and over until i got the referral i wanted. since that time, i have lost this weight plus a little more, but i don’t really see it: i live in here and i always look like me to me.

however, yesterday i went and did my little weigh in thing and then changed clothing. i had selected a top that i had not worn in a couple of months, and i discovered, much to my chagrin, that it had become so large on me that it would slip of my shoulders.

i had to buy a new shirt, i couldn’t go home to change and i couldn’t go through my day with the shirt tucked into my bra straps. so, a new shirt. off the rack, no less. not from a thrift store. i never allow myself such luxuries. my family is wondering if i’m some weird pod person.

…..and i am done chatting for now.

Now, those who are well-acquainted with me know that I don’t really consider formal education in creative writing to be something I’m going to be able to pursue, so it might surprise those folks to learn that I decided to take the class. I continue to contend that those who possess the gift of outsider art may be destroyed by being forced into the academic mold, and that any author who decides to take up formal training has got to consider this when making the decision*. What I don’t often reveal is my own belief that you simply cannot train brilliance into everyone who dreams of the life of a celebrated author; for most people in that situation, pursuing a BFA or an MFA in creative writing is just a path to disappointment and crushing debt. **

That said, I’ve been stuck for a seriously long time, and pushes that don’t involve falling off of cliffs are not unwelcome. I’m perfectly able to recognize this, and I’m perfectly willing to move into the path of the push. Unfortunately, I didn’t really get the help I needed, not in the ultimate sense of what I wanted, and so I am left feeling a little lost.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I’ve had very real, very detrimental writer’s block for the past 15 years***. On the face of it, this is an extravagant stretch of truth, for I have written vast quantities of zero-draft work, and articles for newsletters, and poetry, and, of course, the essays/memoirs/stories that are mixed into all the dreck that makes up this blog/vanity site. I’ve amused myself with sock monkey stories, and even gone so far as to pop a retelling into a local fiction contest, but those, too, don’t count as successes, merely as glimmers of hope. They have all been things to keep me busy, to disguise failure, for when the words went away, they left a great black hole that would have ruined me had I stood on the edge and looked down. When the unembellished truths are told, I have not gotten a completed beginning, middle, and end of a piece of fiction onto a piece of paper in … in… well, it’s actually more than 15 years.

For this class, I did. Mind you, it’s draft 1.1 rather than draft 0, but, without doubt, getting to draft 1.1 is a success. My 5 pages were to be turned in on 6 July, and I sat down on the morning of July 5th and let it all come out. I showed it to Michael, who immediately understood what was happening in the story. Confident that I at least had a draft that presented the elements I would eventually refine, I sent the story in that night and spent a week waiting for my turn at the critique stand.

At first, just looking at the body language of the readers, it was very clear that I had hit one aspect correctly; it had been my intention to provoke anxiety and tension in the reader, and, boyo, I hit that mark. I almost laughed out loud when I realized that. There were comments about word choices and points that could be removed, all to be expected, and all fair. But what really disappointed me was this: virtually no one picked up on the central ambiguity. The story is set up to show you what the primary character believes to be true but leave the reader to wonder if it’s actually a correct interpretation of events. Not a soul amongst the classroom readers addressed this. Anyone who had anything to say about the ambiguous cues understood it to be a failing in my ability to understand and describe the behaviors of the female protagonist.

I could weep. This is a harsh thing, to finally break a bad, bad stretch only to find that you have utterly failed to convey a crucial plot point.

Now, here is the most difficult part: I can’t let myself get caught in self-slaughter over this failure, as that is a component of writer’s block. If I stare at that fact, I will soon enough find myself staring back into that empty hole and writing endless amounts of zero-drafts. I’m finding it difficult not to castigate myself into wordlessness; this is, perhaps, the last thing that my fears can steal from me.

And that, my friends, my sunshines, is the dance. Somehow, I have to wrest the baton from the conductor, change the melody the pit orchestra plays, and pirouette across a razor’s edge.

—————————————-

*Of course, this depends on whether or not any given author is sufficiently able to distance himself enough to recognize that he is, or is not, creating fantastical and important works of outsider art. Which, in turn, begs the question: if the author is capable of that sort of discernment, is he really an outsider? That, however, is a pleasant argument for another day. Suffice for this moment is my reluctant honesty: I consider myself merely an amateur with potential, and never mind those minor publication credits.

** Or maybe it’s a path to books of the The DaVinci Code sort. *Still* my favorite target whenever I need a book to take potshots at! A more undeserving bestseller has never crossed my desk. I never thought I’d find anyone I believe more laughably overrated than ol’ Ernie Hemmingway, but then along came Dan Brown. Yay! Thank you, Dan Brown!

***(There, I wrote it down, I must face its truth. Putting it down actually makes it very real for me, rather than just a bit of hyperbole used to express the depth of my frustration. Fifteen years is a horribly long time to not do the thing you love.)

• We had coffee and sammys at Alterra on the Lake with Steve.
• We went to the West Allis Farmer’s Market–where we ran into Ruhl Zilke, an unexpected pleasure–and bought herbs, tomatoes, and some annuals, and were treated most kindly by all the vendors
• We took our bikes back to the east side, met with Steve again, and rode bikes around and through Lakeshore State Park. I found it necessary to command everyone to envy how fabulous a day I was having. ::laughs:: That excursion had the additional benefit of trailing behind Summerfest grounds, and so I got to experience a small taste of Summerfest, which always–most inconveniently, I might add–happens on my birthday weekend. In any event, it was a reminder of whhy I am not overfond of Summerfest, AND I got a delightful glance of all the people who work backstage to make the band happen. The looks of sheer boredom on their faces was positively wonderful, not because I wish them ill at their jobs, but because I sometimes feel like I am the only person in Miltown who simply does not care about Summerfest.
• And, last for today, dinner at Alem Ethiopian Village. We were introduced to this food style by G and Padruig up in the Twin Cities, but it took a while for Ethiopian restaurants to land in Milwaukee, and then, once that happened, a clear “best” to emerge. Fortunately, I didn’t decide I wanted to check out the possibilities until after the dust settled, and since they very proudly and pointedly announced on their website that the vegetarian food is actually all vegan (always a problem here in Brew City–or most anywhere, I suppose, in the States, as vegetarian usually means lacto-ovo vegetarianism), I have been wanting to try it. I remembered enjoying the food at the restaurant in the Twin Cities, but was not overwhelmed by it; Alem, however, is quite good. We got the vegetarian sampler, and we left full and happy. There was nothing on the sampler that I would not eat again. So, yay, another restaurant that will work to make us both very happy.

And I’m too tired to put the pictures in or write more. Just, Me & Michael had a splendid day.

Richland Center, WI

One mornin’ at breakfast I said to my wife
We’ve been everywhere once and some places twice
As I had another helpin’ of country ham
she said “We haven’t never been to Vietnam
there’s a bunch of our boys over there”
So we went

Well we got a big welcome when we drove in
Through the gates of a placed named Long Ben
We checked in and everything got kinda quite
But a soldier boy said “Just wait til’ tonight
Things get noisy things start happening’
Big bad firecrackers”

Well that night we did about four shows for the boys
And they were livin’ it up with a whole lot of noise
We did our last song for the night
Then we crawled into bed for some peace and quite
But things weren’t peaceful things weren’t quite
Things were scary

Well for a few minutes June hadn’t spoken a word
Then I thought at first she hadn’t heard
Then a shell exploded not two miles away
She sat up in bed and I heard her say
“What was that” I said “That was a shell or a bomb”
She said “John I’m scared” I said “Me too”

Well all night long that noise kept on
And the noise would chill you right to the bone
The bullets and the shells and the atomic bombs
shook our bed and finally fell and it never let up
It was gonna get worse before it got any better

Well, the sun came up the noise died down
We got a few minutes sleep and we were sleepin’ sound
Then a soldier knocked on the door and said
“Last night we brought in seven dead and fourteen wounded!”
We were goin’ down to the base hospital
To see the boys Yeah

So we to the hospital day by day
And of the night we were singin’ away
Then the shells and the bombs again til’ dawn
And the helicopter brought in a wounded man
night after night day after day
comin’ and a goin’

So we sadly sang for them our last song
And reluctantly we said so long
We did our best to let them know that we cared
for every last one of them over there
Whether we belonged over there or not
somebody loves them and needs them

Well now that’s about all there is to tell
about our little trip and the livin’ hell
and if I ever go back over there again
I hope there’s none of our boys to sing for
I hope this ol’ war’s over with and they’re all back home
To stay in peace
—Johnny Cash, 1971

This park, in Richland Center, holds VA markers for the town’s sons and daughters who have gone to war. We stopped here on our way home today; I’ve always wanted to do so, and Memorial Day certainly seemed a fitting day to do it. There are a lot of names here, a lot of markers, and nearly every 20th-21st century military action I can think of is here, perhaps even some from the 19th; I didn’t note the campaign, action, or war indicated on every marker. Memorial day is for remembering the dead, and Johnny’s song could be about any campaign that was ever fought. War is cruelty, and you can not refine it*; and no number of flags or parks can ever make up for the lost sons and daughters.