Femme Fatale: Part I

I have discovered that I am a fatalist. In this realization, I feel not only that I have come to a certain philosophical "checkpoint" for a burgeoning idea from since my teen years, but also, in a welcome breath of relief, reconciled a gnawing, uncomfortable pressure I've lived with for much longer that keeps me on constant alert for making the "right" decision at every crossroads. It is a variation of Kundera's einmal ist keinmal, the recognition of our own insignificance not in the face of a vast physical space, but under the churning wheels of a temporal one, where cause and effect move but in one direction. However, instead of being pained by the inconsequence of existence, I am set free by it.

This entry tells the story of my arrival at this "checkpoint".

I: THE MICROCOSMIC ILLUSION

When I was in 10th grade, I was exposed to Calvinism and the role that predetermination played in its doctrines through Ms. Seabreeze's American History class. Up on the third floor of my high school building, I remember our class collectively struggling to understand a belief system that sprang from the Christian roots of doing right to get into heaven, while simultaneously stating that God's mercy was the sole determinant of the fate of one's soul. How, we protested, could a religion promote predetermination without seeing its followers, lacking incentives to follow God's decree, lapse into chaos and sin? "Think of it this way," we were prompted by Ms. Seabreeze, "You still have the freedom to make a choice about your actions. It is just that God already knows what choice you're going to make." The fact of God's knowing the outcome of an event didn't negate the freedom possessed by an individual to impact that event.

Although this idea was but a drop in the bucket of our course, and we moved on quickly from Calvinism to other 16th century developments that would impact the earliest years of American history, I was intrigued by this idea that, although counterintuitive, was not self-contradictory. A comfortable atheist, I sought to test this concept against the laws of logic by removing the element of religion in a thought experiment; I replaced the role of God with a fortune teller who always accurately foresaw the future, and imagined that this clairvoyant laid out 5 playing cards before me: a king, a queen, a jack, a joker, and an ace. I was tasked with picking out any card of my choice, and she, with her back turned, would aim to make a prediction about my selection.

Well lo and behold, because she was a true fortune teller, she correctly predicted my card selection 100% of the time. She therefore saw the future not as a series of diverging paths, each one leading to a different outcome, but as a singular path that held only one possible consequence. However, the paradox that emerged was that from my perspective, as a humble seer only of the present, my freedom of choice was never in doubt. I always had the capacity to choose any card that I wanted; the only pressure I felt was my own internal decision-making process, over which I seemingly had complete control. Predetermination, or "fate" (for those inclined to use a more romantic term), could exist hand-in-hand with free will. It is only the shift in perspective that affects the perception of reality.

For a little while, the logic of this pleased my 15-year-old mind. But, naturally, ideas beget ideas, and I soon was faced with overcoming the obstacle of this fortune teller's theoretical existence, a pound of flesh that I had essentially concocted out of thin air, and who sooner or later I had to pay back to the stoic gods of reason. For my conclusion to be more than the bastard child of an adolescent thought experiment, I had to answer the question, In the physical world, just what does this fortune teller represent? What, in tangible form, is all-knowing, would observe the actions of every individual, and could foresee the decision of every traveler who came upon two roads diverged?

The answer I came to - an idea that has only grown more nuanced and ingrained in my mind over the last ten years - was the Universe. The Universe, including all its physical manifestations, is the system that encompasses everything that ever has been, is, and will be, and therefore the perfect candidate to play the real-life role of the fortune teller*. The Universe is the only entity from which the perspective of all physical dimensions (AKA all events that may occur at any given moment in time) and all temporal dimensions (AKA the timeline from beginning to end of any particular event) can be seen. Although this perspective does not invalidate the perspective of the individual human being (or a bacterium, for that matter), it is the only one that takes into account all other perspectives that exist, and therefore the only one of the two that is complete**. Given this trump card, the second conclusion I arrived at - one that, this time, held water beyond the theoretical confines of a thought experiment - is that the microcosmic, individual perception of control over one's decisions does not exist in the holistic context. In other words, free will is an illusion.

Although by the time I was a junior in college, this was a "gut-feeling" belief I held to (still being utterly unfamiliar with the bodies of work of Howard Bloom, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and other authors who would come to illuminate my understanding...including Albert Hofmann, if I may get cheeky***), my intellectual understanding of it was still tenuous, and it took another five years for it to develop into the fuller (albeit still very skeletal) idea that I've just presented. It had even further to go in terms of trickling down into my pragmatist views on living. That second half of this story, shedding light on why Kundera's "lightness of being" for me is not unbearable but one of life's saving graces, and why fatalism represents a falling into place of still more puzzle pieces in this existence, will have to wait for another time.

*Although I was incapable of making the connection at the time, of course this meant by extension the Universe is also God. But that is for another blog entry.

** Because of its completeness, according to mathematician Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem it is therefore also inconsistent. This holds in my analogy because the complete perspective of the universe necessarily encompasses a multitude of conflicting (inconsistent) perspectives by individual human beings.

***...which I may, because this is my blog!

September is the busiest month...

I am exhausted.

I am trying to make the most out of my weekends now. And what a month for that to be happening - September is just a complete breath of things starting to die and grow at the same time, a month so dynamic I feel like I could burst. I really think my three-year rut of giving in to inertia at every free minute is over. Each moment can be one of three things: downtime, maintenance, or life to the fullest. Spring of this past year I devoted a tremendous amount of mental energy to make "maintenance" the floor and not the ceiling ... I don't feel ready to let go of that momentum. I wonder how long it will take to exhaust this extreme of the pendulum swing? And how long after that until I can expect to reach equilibrium?

*sigh*

For now, Mondays in September are quite the day. It's a thin wall that's tasked with containing all my visceral highs and lows within a mere two days of seven.

I'm hanging in there.

A LOVELY Labor Day Weekend

For over a month, I had been looking forward to the weekend of September 3, not because of the lure of the long weekend, but because I knew there'd be the possibility that it would end with this:

...which it did! For those inferentially-impaired, the above-mentioned "measurements, color, style, price, and size" are that of a wedding dress. My wedding dress. Tee!

I'd scheduled a Saturday afternoon appointment at Lovely, a bridal boutique in the West Village, for myself and my mini-entourage of women: my mom, Chris's mom Maureen, and Chris's sister Kate. Like the rest of the wedding planning process, I wanted dress-shopping to be low-stress and fun, something that wouldn't overshadow the wedding itself, yet would be remembered fondly. I had stayed true to that philosophy thus far - the first time I walked into a bridal shop was completely on a whim, with my best friend and maid-of-honor Jen who was in town for the month. Sans appointment, we stepped into a Main Line boutique, and just like that, I tried on a handful of gowns and found two that I could have been happy with that only barely stretched my budget. No pushy sales women, no opinionated gaggle of bridesmaids, no drama.

But drama or not, what would a dress-shopping experience be if I'd stopped there? And so, with the help of my sister-to-be Kate, I organized a day out for the Chen/Canary women in New York, a metropolis I hadn't set foot in in three years (and which, to my knowledge, still lays claim to my Cloud 9 wallet and Maryland driver's license from my last visit). It was a gorgeous afternoon kicked off by a late brunch of Eggs Norwegian and a mimosa at Pastis in the meatpacking district, followed by a stroll through the shady and lush residential streets before our arrival at Lovely, an unassuming boutique nestled into the brown brick of West 4th Street townhouses. We almost missed it, as the only sign of its presence from the street was a simple chalkboard slate with the store's name written in script, hung from a black iron gate leading to its basement entrance.

From there, I loved every single moment of the dress-shopping experience. From the calming but quirky robin's egg blue walls covered in pleats of folded newspaper, to my mom telling me which dresses caught her eye, to examining trays of bejeweled hair pins and netted veils, to the three racks of draped, corseted, and feathered gowns that we could browse on our own, with no other customers to compete with ... and to being led upstairs to a sunny private salon with couches that stood on curved wooden legs, into which my family plopped comfortably as if they were at home. Oh, and I loved my salesgirl too! Melanie with her knowledgeable but yielding recommendations, earnest tone, and practical knotted turquoise flats put me right at ease and in the perfect mood to pick out a wedding gown.

For any brides-to-be reading this, I recommend creating an Oohs-and-Aahs rubric for any family and friends coming along with you. I could easily gauge the collective reaction of Kate and the moms - which were pretty in sync, mind you - by the sharpness of their

breath intake as I emerged from the curtains of the dressing room each time. The obvious "no" was a lace deep v-neck A-line; the lace made me look too old-fashioned an elicited only a restrained "awww". The more sure-footed dresses were accompanied by more chest-clutching and slower-paced sentences. "That. looks. fantastic." The dress that I ultimately decided on was collectively preferred for its wearability and movement, stylistic complements to the venue, and its overall Amyness. Although it competed neck-and-neck with a Grecian deep-v with a silver-beaded empire waist, I decided that the latter was of a much more common cut that I could find anywhere and wear anytime. The accents on my dress would only be fitting for a single day.

And that - was that! After just over an hour, we made our way back downstairs with my contract and credit card in hand, to find the next set of customers having just arrived and beginning to browse. In under four months, I'll be back at Lovely to pick up and take home the perfect dress, in my size, for my wedding.

Tee!

For more photos, click here.

Last photo courtesy of PRCouture.

Been locked up in my cell...

Q: How long does it take a dunderhead to figure out how to send a cell phone photo to an email address?

A: I have had this cell phone for three and a half years!! The hell is wrong with me... If a million monkeys hacked away at my cell phone for a million years, they would have written War and Peace in a text and I'd still be figuring this one out. *sigh*

Here is the thing with my phone. It's got two amazing features: a slick reflective screen that's great for checking makeup, and a kickass camera. Other than that, I use it for texting and phoning, don't see no other purpose for it, and those fast-talking smartphone salesmen ain't gonna tell me otherwise, dagnabbit. BUT! I've never been able to unlock the magic of Amazing Feature #2, for you see - I know how to take the photo, but I've never known how to get it out of my phone...

Until today.

Ahh, yes. In celebration of this historic moment, let's collectively take a stroll through the masterpieces that have been hidden from human eyes. (Other than mine.)

"Number 1 Bun" January 2007

Note the contrast of dark and light. Also note the newly retired phone by the tissue box - size of a pea but no camera feature! If you extrapolate from this the rate by which I upgrade my phone, I'll own an iPhone by the 50th anniversary of my death. This was the first photo I took on my current phone.

"Giant Sack o' Bras" March 2009

I'm struggling to add any qualifiers here. It's pretty much a giant sack o' bras from when I worked at Victoria's Secret. Disney sack, to be precise. Net worth: over $2000. How do I know that? We caught a few thieves trying to steal it. They dropped it and ran away when we called the cops, who then asked us to tally up the retail cost. My Aldo bucket bag is resting right behind it, for size comparison. Yup. Giant sack o' bras.

"Grundton in Repose" March 2009

One of the many in the "Grundton in Repose" series.

"Phillies v. Nationals" April 29, 2009

There is simply not a bad seat in CBP! Lately, I don't even sit anymore - I stay in the 100-level behind the wheelchair rows and get a damn good spot. We lost this game 4-0. We are terrible, just terrible, against the Nats. Stay tuned for some payback...

"Do I look flat in this?" April 2009

This was a period during which I became increasingly paranoid about the state of my car, even though there was nothing wrong with it. Not a thing.I took this photo and messaged it to Chris in a panicked frenzy after driving down to the TFA office to interview for the Program Director position with Mike Wang, freaking out that my car was going to fall apart while I was 76. Turns out the churning in my stomach I attributed to non-existent car problems was just interview nerves. This is what a normal car tire looks like. (Forgot my dramamine that day.)

"Good Luck Amy" May 2009

My last day at Vicky's was marked by a sweet ass cookie-cake from Vicky (the human, not the corporation). Thanks Vicky, and much luck to you as well!

"Einstein's Lappy" August 2009

This statue fucking rocks!! I found it with my mom when we were walking around D.C. Note my strategically placed hand. He gave to the world the photoelectric effect, the theory of general relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy. But I will always love him for his giant bronze lappy. God bless you, Einstein!

"Homies versus Couchies" December 2009

Winter in the warehouse is bitch, but so is anyone who tries to test their billiards skills against the Homies (Android not pictured). They know their way around the Hungry Hungry Hippo. 'Nuff said.

"A Dooey Pile" March 2010

OK, I see these trucks all over Philadelphia. They really couldn't have found a better name for the company that "brings the highest global standards of safe and secure chemical transportation"? I don't want to associate chemical handling with a dooey pile. On their website they call all their employees "Pyle People", which just sounds bizarre and makes me picture a bunch of tiny Lego men for some reason. It's not just me, right??

"An Asshole" August 2010

I have to share a parking garage with this asshat.

OK, we're almost done. Stay with me, here.

"Phillies v. Nationals, Part 2" August 22, 2010

We are all caught up in my life in cell photos. This was yesterday. We were 4-0 in the 7th inning when the long-anticipated scattered thunderstorm of the day finally came. Geoff, Jule, Chris, and I got to see the groundscrew unroll the tarp, and for the hour-and-a-half delay, we watched people in the 100-level gradually leave the ballpark while we plotted to steal their seats. After four hours of standing behind the wheelchair row, my dogs were barking! Patience, my pups... One of the ushers will be turning away any minute now...

"Phillies v. Nationals, Part 2b" August 22, 2011

Our coup de grace!! After being foiled once, we finally nabbed some sweet seats right by the first base line as it stopped raining. Cosmic justice for our patience was doled out almost immediately with an Ibanez two-run homer once the rain delay was lifted, and we ultimately shut out the Nats, 6-0. Of course, cosmic justice for our thievery was just as promptly handed down - as soon as we left to start the trek back to our car in FDR park, a sunshower broke out and completely doused us.

So there you have it! Three years' worth of cell phone photos crammed into a single blog entry, culminating in a kickass view of Citizens Bank Park. Much love to my dinky little phone, without which you wouldn't have wasted the last five minutes of your life reading this.

Until next time :)

I Will Not Even Dignify It With Its Proper Name.*

The bowling alley on the corner of City Avenue and Haverford Drive is, hands down, the most ghetto bowling alley I have been to in my life. It is seemingly manned by a single individual behind the shoe rental counter. The bowling ball racks were about 20% filled, and one of the balls that Chris encountered had all 3 finger holes parallel to each other. Halfway through our first game, a mysterious, unidentified object appeared in the lane gutter and wobbled like a seal trying to shimmy itself up a hill. Our keypad was held together by a piece of duct tape, and the leader of the group three lanes down from us kept yelling, "FAGGOT! FAGGOT-ASS!!" every time he bowled poorly. And there are no concession stands, so one is required to experience the evening completely sober.

I am ashamed to type these words, but this is the bowling alley that Chris and I took our friend Geoff to on his birthday. Had we taken him to the Sizzler it probably would have felt like the Ritz. If you read this, Geoff, please accept this very public IOU:

We, Chris and Amy, owe you one night of bowling-until-your-fingers-die at North Bowl or another swanky bowling alley of your choice.

For everybody else reading, please consider this a public service announcement of the perils of the bowling alley at the corner of City Ave and Haverford.

That is all.

*Center Lanes. You have been warned.

The lessons I've learned...

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns,

so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry." ~ Richard Feynman

Since I have learned how to look, I have consistently and without fail found the most mind-boggling patterns that recur in the universe. Once I learned how to look, I couldn't not see them. Just as the human brain has the biological tendency to find a face where there is none - in an electrical outlet, for instance, or a car - I feel like I am now wired to find the manifestation of these universal rules in the way that a trained "seer" cannot avoid seeing a three-dimensional shape mysteriously emerge from a purely two-dimensional Magic Eye poster. Even this phenomenon itself is not a purely anecdotal one. It is subject to the same universal rules but arises in many different forms. Escher eludes to this in "La Mezquita" (left). Look at a series of arches from one perspective, and it is a random lot of pillars and horseshoe curves...but move a few steps to the left or the right - switch your point of view - and as Douglas Hofstadter eloquently writes, "beautiful regularity emerges. You've reordered the same information by changing your way of looking at it." This phenomenon also becomes familiar to anyone who has sorted data in an Excel spreadsheet. Look at a 10,000 KB document of pure raw data, and it is nothing but a messy soup of stuff. But once you learn how to filter, order, and graph, there is again that beautiful regularity, and meaning emerges.

"Since I have learned how to look..." These seven words hold an experience that is indescribably dear to me - possibly one of the things I treasure most about being alive. Just as all learning is, the experience is an ongoing one, and I can only imagine how exponentially more meaningful those seven words will be to me, in ten, twenty, or (if I'm lucky) fifty years from now, perhaps when I am on my death bed. As with all human beings, since being born, it has taken me roughly 21 years to acquire the most basic information necessary to serve as the foundation for this kind of search for meaning. As the Empiricists will tell you, understanding does not occur in a vacuum, and I believe that the richer one's library of experiences, both academic and worldly, conceptual and concrete, the more one is able to get a glimpse of the mammoth yet delicate processes that drive the universe and everything that has ever sprang forth from it, including oneself.

In this developmental vein, there are countless learners whom I have looked to to teach me, but the two figures who have touched me the most - just masters of finding these elegant, recurring patterns - are the aforementioned academic Douglas Hofstaedter, and the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. I will not go into detail about their life work and the conclusions they have drawn, as I simply cannot do them justice at this humble point in my life, much less in this humble blog, but Hofstadter has found nature's infinitely long threads weaving through what seem to be the most disparate, unconnected topics - number theory, consciousness, Zen, modern art, genetics, artificial intelligence, and the list goes on. For Campbell, a thread of a different material ties together possibly every human culture that has ever existed, and he finds that the similarities that exist between the mythologies of the aborigines, Christians, Jains, Navajo... again - the list goes on, are too significant to chalk up to randomness. Like Hofstadter, there are fundamental patterns to the universe that Campbell spent his life understanding.

I need to pause this post at this point, because it has already developed a life of its own that will take over my day if I do not put my foot down, temporarily. If anyone is still reading up to this point, I must first thank you for staying with me for so long, and secondly ask for your extreme patience as I continue to develop my thoughts. What I have written here is a first attempt at a synthesis of my inchoate reflections over the last five years or so (since I met Chris, basically - I will let you connect the dots there). I apologize if things are muddy, and in this initial stab many ideas are probably redundant. (Also - apologies to both academics named above for such a coarse-grained representation of their genius.) But I have more to say, and as always, more to learn, so we'll see next time, how I pick up where I left off.

I'll end this post today with one last little recurring pattern for you. In the opening of this post, I quoted Hofstadter, so it is only fair to end on a thought from Campbell. In looking at the tapestry of human experience, and how to reconcile the extremes of human tragedy with the ability to laugh, here is the mythologist's take on learning how to look, and his conclusion:

"The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest - as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible."

Amy Getting Married?

Although it causes me physical pain to do this, I'm going to refrain from giving more minute-by-minute updates on my plants and instead devote a post to something almost as important - the planting of my wedding. I mean planning.

A few months ago, in the initial stage, Chris and I made a trip to Baltimore to scope out a few wedding venues. The locales that ended up leading the pack were the Baltimore Aquarium (pros: holds special memories for me and Chris, great evening view of the harbor, unique wedding venue, guests would have an hour to tour the aquarium), and Chase Court, a 200+ year-old former church that is now privately owned (pros: in the absolutely fabulous mid-town neighborhood of Mount Vernon, blocks away from Peabody Conservatory, has a garden so the ceremony could be outdoors, and has an easygoing but romantic atmosphere that I had previously envisioned.) We ended up going with Chase Court and decided that the Aquarium could always serve as an outing for guests on the day after, and I moved on to researching caterers and ceremony officiants.

Having good food at our wedding is one of the more important
"must-have" factors for me and Chris, and given that caterers are typically charged with rentals from tables to linens as well, we wanted to make sure to devote real attention to finding a good catering outfit.That encompassed making a mini-trip down to Baltimore, which we are almost never hesitant to do.

We stayed smack in Mount Vernon with my good friend from college, Ryan Carroll. (He literally lives two blocks away from Chase Court, so he would have the option of log-rolling up the street to attend our wedding, if that is his want.) I love Ryan's place because not only has his landlord decorated the curving stairs and walkways of the apartment halls with bowls of candy, but Ryan owns the cutest damn little girl cat I've ever met, a bug-eyed, three-legged little hobbler named Mariah (whose tail is about half the length of Grundton's). Not only was it great to have the chance to catch up with a good friend, but it was such an added to bonus to have a kitty to wake up to, as Chris and I are quite used to. I root for Team Ryan and Mariah.

We had three appointments on Friday that took us from Hunt Valley, about 15 miles north of Baltimore, right back to Mount Vernon. The catering meetings gave us quite a bit to talk about, and for the first time Chris became really invested in the planning of the wedding. After hearing a chef draw up a completely customized menu for us, and seeing fabric options and styles of tables and chairs, there were enough details that Chris finally had something concrete to latch on to, and most of the decisions we were pondering were ones with some depth, not just a back-and-forth of invitation wordings and polka dots versus filigree. In the afternoon, between two of our meetings, we ate a late lunch at Donna's by the Washington Monument and got to discussing seating arrangements, and figuring out how to best allow the different groups of guests from our lives (family, friends from the office, people we met at Hopkins, people we knew since before we met each other, friends we made in Philly, etc.) get to know each other. It was a hearty conversation about which guests would have what interests in common, and which were the personalities that would be the "glue" between strangers. For anyone who has planned this sort of thing, it's the type of question that would come up on the "Analytical Reasoning" section of the LSAT. (For the record: real-life - interesting; on a test - not interesting.)

So thus far, we have our venue and are nearing confirming a caterer. I've tried on a few dresses at Bijou Bridal on a whim with Jen (Sherman, in Philly for the summer to work at Institute!), and was delighted to find that not only did my mental "ideal" gown look great on me - strapless sweetheart neckline with a whole crapload of ruffles - but there were a whole lot of them to choose from and after an initial visit I already found two that I would be happy to wear. Both Chris and I also just "booked" our bridesmaids and groomsmen, which has been the most exciting part for me (because it's the most personal!). Once I find an officiant, I will consider the "Big Three" of wedding components to be complete (location, food, ceremony). After that, all the planning will be in the details and I get to wrack my brain over polka dots versus filigree. Stay tuned! :)

(Pictured above right: Chris and his groomsman, Mike!)
Chase Court photograph courtesy of Jason Putsche Photography.

All in the (Plant) Family

I know. I am a big dork. I don't care. The threat of social ostracism isn't going to make me not love my plants. Or not take a family photo of them. Or not spend the bulk of my evening learning how to use the "callouts" feature in Word to add captions.

Happy 234th Birthday, AMURRICA!

Today is day 4 of my 4-day weekend! I am having a beer at 1:30 (Ballast Point, Big Eye!) while simultaneously recovering from a late July 4th night and gearing up for my intense 3-day workweek. How freakin' great is the summer?

Random plant update from 2 posts back:
In the name of humanity, I've induced physician-assisted suicide on my pansies from March and stopped watering them because they were looking pretty worse for wear (from the summer heat). On the plus side, check out how much the basil have grown since June 14!










So...oh, yeah, Independence Day. The patriot in me decided to celebrate by not staying at home and watching King of the Hill all day (although if there is anything more Amurrican than Hank Hill, I don't want to know about it). Chris and I spent the evening in the Art Museum area, where we were literally right under the fireworks and got to observe the migration of the Philadelphian people, coming out en masse to commemorate the most historical of American holidays, in arguably the most historical of American cities. As familiar as I am now, through attendance at countless Phillies games, with the feeling of being a component entity of a dynamic superorganism, it was still a somewhat foreign sensation to simultaneously observe and participate in a community activity of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of my genetic and cultural peers. At the corner of Pennsylvania and Fairmount we all stood completely rapt as we watched, necks craned, the explosive ascent of fireball after fireball shattering into millions of golden specks and arching comet tails, trailing willowy fingers of smoke that showered onto the tops of our heads and into the streets. Interestingly, it was not altogether different from feeling the smallness of oneself when staring into the abyss of the night sky, alone. The same liberating feeling of being but a speck on the map comes also, somehow, when sharing a brief 10 minutes with a sea of strangers... After the grand finale of fireworks, almost like magic, all the block parties and patio furniture folded themselves back up, tucked back into alleys and hallways, and we all retreated to the nooks and crannies we came from.

I'll end this July 4 post with just the best, best vibes to my dear friend Jeff King, who is serving abroad. Once you've been through employment at the Rockville Library together, you are bonded for life;) We are thinking of you back here in the states, so keep yourself safe until we see you again!

Relaxing!

It's a gorgeous Saturday morning! The view from my balcony in the summer is one of lush, lively greenery, and after a long week of work I am content to let Chris sleep in, and just sit outside and let the feeling of having no obligations wash over me with the morning breeze. Grundton is out here with me too, alternately relaxing and rolling around, massaging himself against the rough concrete of the balcony floor, and exploring the sight and sounds of the outdoors - poking his head through the railing to identify the mild sounds of construction workers and car engines below, and following flittering bugs with his eyes, letting little agitated meows erupt from his throat. It's a very different kind of stimulation from what he usually gets indoors, and it's rare for him to be allowed to just hang out on the balcony. Occasionally I have to get up from where I'm sitting to keep a close eye on him - although I'm pretty relaxed about him interacting with the outdoors and I trust him to know not to do anything rash, I am cautious when he pokes his body just a tad too far out over the balcony. He knows this, too! When I call out with a coaxing "Grundton!" he meows in slight protest at my interjection, but always pulls his body back from the railing instinctively. But there is no denying it. We both love lounging outdoors!

Growing...a Green Thumb, Part I

Mid-April, during the last semi-cold-ish spell of the 2010 spring, I bought a pot of pansies. I was determined to green up our barren balcony. I was determined to keep a plant alive. This plant. Any plant.

I learned that pansies are a cold-weather plant, which was a bit disappointing because I knew the weather was only going to get warmer. But it was a lush, beautiful pot, and I figured if it was going to die as the weather got warmer, I might as well make the most of it and develop the self-discipline to take care of a plant. I developed a routine of watering it everyday and turning it periodically so each side of the plant got adequate sunshine. When it was excessively windy, I moved the pot indoors so the flowers wouldn't get too harsh a beating from the wind. I learned to pinch off the flowers that withered to give the other flowers more resources to grow bigger.

As the weather got warmer, experience taught me that the pansies would wilt from the heat, but would re-straighten with a good watering. I kept up the watering through May, but as of now, with the weather pretty consistently warm and periodically humid, the pansies are a little worse for wear, with one side of the pot pretty much dead yet the remaining portions inexplicably thriving. There is a lopsided look to the plant but I'll try to keep them alive as long as possible! I'm encouraged by the fact that I've kept a plant alive for 2 months now, which is certainly a record for me.

About a month after getting the pansies, feeling excited about my new balcony accessory, I got an herb-growing kit for $7 from, of all places, Bed Bath and Beyond. I was skeptical, but figured that for a few bucks, it was worth a shot to add some more greenery that was edible to boot. The herb-growing kit included a growing "tin/bucket", some soft dirt (looked like chocolate cake mix), liquid fertilizer, and seed packs for basil, parsley, and chives.

Here are the seedlings just starting to sprout. I was such a proud mama! As you can see from the first picture, the basil came up first, and the other herb sprouts are barely identifiable, although I guess you can tell they're chives because they just look like little grass blades.









The second photo above was taken a mere day later, so you can get a sense of how quickly the plants were growing! Although the parsley were definitely late bloomers - at this point they really hadn't come up at all and I was afraid the seeds were duds. Magic beans, so to speak.

A week later, though, the parsley definitely caught up! The sprouts were going into toddler-mode. What's interesting is that the parsley was NOT recognizable - instead of the jagged, maple-leaf like shape, their leaves were more like pointed ovals. In fact, Chris was pretty convinced that the parsley was actually the basil, but I'm going off on a tangent.

I watered the herbs daily and gave them liquid fertilizer about once a week and was really excited by their growth. I kept the tin pot on our windowsill, and had to rotate it once - sometimes even twice - a day because the herbs grew so conspicuously towards the sun. If you check out this photo, you can see that most clearly in the parsley (on the right side).

Towards the end of May, I made the heart-wrenching discovery that keeping the herbs indoors had one huge drawback that had mysteriously eluded me for the entire time since I'd had them - GRUNDTON. One afternoon, I caught him chewing voraciously (as much as a housecat can with a houseplant) at a few blades of chives, with several of the chives and a few of the parsley uprooted. Although I was hesitant to expose the herbs to really windy days, I decided they were grown up enough to start keeping them outdoors on the balcony with the pansies (and a completely wilted, dried up pot of dahlias that didn't take to my care).

This past weekend, I decided that the herbs were getting too big to still share a pot, so I transplanted the heartiest of the 3 - the basil (as the chives didn't seem to be recovering too well from Grundton's marauding, and the parsley were only so-so) - into its own container. The leaves are HUGE now! I was really nervous about the transplant and I tried to be really gentle as to not damage any roots. Now, a few days later, the basil seems to still be growing steadily and the leaves look healthy. Woohoo!! No plant murderer here. (Although I'm crossing my fingers on the chives and parsley. Although technically the murderer there would be Grundton.)
The newest member of the family is a couple of begonias I purchased at the same place I got the pansies - P. Spinelli & Sons, a landscape and nursery joint in Narberth. The begonias on the left (with the smaller flowers) enjoy a full sun, while the larger type of begonias on the right thrive in partial shade. I decided to go with begonias because we're getting into the heat of summer and I figured frost-averse flowers would last the longest at this time of year, and they don't require as diligent watering as the pansies.

I'm hoping that they continue to do well, and if they survive into mid-July, I'll definitely be looking into some new additions!

More plant updates to come...