I don’t blame ya

If you don't check this site much after the last month. Time to catch up!

From a letter to my mum:

Cardhu has been Impossible Puppy lately, at least so far as respecting the fences around the garden plots goes. And we are beyond astounded at the amount of rotting wood bits he can find up on the back yard ridge. He brings them down into the middle of the yard and turns them into wood chips. The result is that the back yard often looks like a sawmill's.

But we are finally getting some sunshine lasting longer than a few minutes at dawn or dusk. At some point in the last couple of months, somewhere beyond the cloud cover, the sun started rising and setting earlier and later. Who knew?

The spiders are coming back. It's not quite like the swallows and Capistrano, but there's a certain practical symmetry. To celebrate Being Pretty Sure The Last Frost Had Come And Gone Day, we bought a mixed flat of columbine, forget-me-nots, bleeding hearts and violets, and made space for them in front by the carport, and at the foot of the ledge in front. I keep checking; they're still alive. And will hopefully flourish. I think it was the forget-me-nots that were labelled "attracts butterflies", which if true will help keep the spiders lively.

You may remember we had a little bush beside the steps leading up from the drive toward the front door; if you don't remember it, you won't have another chance as the last hard frost took it by surprise. I have little hope of it recovering and am now thinking cheery thoughts of hybiscuses. Thats perhaps over-optimistic of me; but it is one of the few spots with guaranteed sunlight.

All the bushes that lived are in flower, great extravagant blowsy debauched blooms that last a day or so, go brownish, and stay right where they are. And so are the pansies I put in last fall; the begonias are worm food, but the pansies came back, waving tiny banners and tootling on tinny party horns. Nola's planning a veggie plot on the side. We looked at available fruiting plants yesterday, but a lot depends on our being able to control the local predator's depredations.

So that covers the home front. In the virtual world, I've been buying and selling land (actually a metaphor for server space) and assiduously learning the local scripting language, so as to teach the things I make to do stuff. Possibly the coolest thing I've made is a toy boat generator. This little gizmo, every thirty seconds or so, waves its magic wand (another metaphor) and causes a miniature boat to rise up on the water and go punting around my pond (I have a pond). When boat meets boat (they each have a two-minute lifespan) they caroom off each other and zip away in opposing directions, afterward settling down to punt mode while licking their wounds and each eyeing the other boat warily.

These boatlings are all miniaturized copies of the full-size boats I've made. The full-size ones seat several avatars (only one pilots, of course), and feature significant variations in handling, speed and controls available. Building them, and the other things, and making them work, has been an unexpectedly absorbing pastime.