I had planted ordinary plain basil in my garden for what the fifth time, from seed - recently? It was a few of those dollar store packets, 4 for a dollar, not much seed in them etc etc.. It was one of those experiments in futility I've been laughed at again and again for... but I thought, yea, why not, this time I'm standing in front of this, pondering buying and planting again as an exercise in futility perhaps, but also in hope - and 'this time for sure' as Mark says. So instead of waiting months and putting it away for some day - I went out that very day with the little packets and put them in a pot that had been sitting in my garden getting watered - and I made sure to keep watering it, with the rest of the strawberries and such, just in case those seeds succeeded. And so far, if I can keep water to it - they have - the basil is up and has second leaves all over that little pot.
So, why did my other attempts at basil fail? I don't know - I waited too long with the seed, I put them 'someplace special' in the garden that wasn't already a part of everything, and thus, they somehow didn't get enough attention? The one lime basil I thought failed actually didn't - there are four plants, but they're tiny and I had overlooked them up until now considering the amount of seed I had planted the 'germination' rate vs the cheap packets is dismal. But - I don't really think that anything was truly wrong with all the regular basil before - it's just perhaps luck as well as utilizing what was in front of me at the right time. I'm hoping I'll get some good basil leaves to use in cooking later.
a pink tomato variety I'm waiting on ripening
I thought about all this while I was pulling a strawberry plant out of a nearby brick out there, it having wandered -- and looking at that pot, and the one next to it with the last strawberry plant I pulled out of somewhere, that is also thriving there. As I walked down to the garage with the pulled plant, asking it if it had a chance, telling it I was going to give it one, and we'll see what happened, this was the best I could do - I thought about the other situation right next to it, and what philosophically I could get out of this, besides 'keep at it', 'keep looking in front of you' and 'do what you can where you can'... basically, just keep trying.
The other thing I did was bring my new garden hose and fittings up from the kitchen into the studio, to be closer to the front door -- I keep passing it by where we dumped it that day putting away the groceries, and knowing I need to do the work to put it on the hydrant and check if all the fittings work together - but I keep passing it by all the same. Bringing it up here will be one less step for when I pick it up and take it outside. I don't feel I was ready to do the project the day we bought it - it was my birthday gift - and I've been dragging my heels since. I wonder if there is a fitting I'm missing, and yet, I haven't pushed myself to check because I don't want to break anything taking the old one off the hydrant when we need it so badly in the heat. It's not going to do itself. *kick tail*
There. I did it. Bringing it upstairs first, and then going out after another hour or so for the rest was the key factor. Besides carrying it upstairs there was the cutting of all the zipties and untwisting the twist ties and unwrapping it from the coil and doing all the rest. I didn't need any other fittings - but now I'm wondering about the old hose if it would do best as a secondary switchout (would buy another quick connect end for it) or move it elsewhere.
little butterfly asked me why I was chasing it - well, look at those colors!
It's the Fourth of July, and we're not sure if we'll do anything tonight. I have to work for four solid days after this - so I always look at that horizon and say 'I'm already tired for next week'... It is also going to be stupendously hot. We bought a watermelon yesterday and cut it up, shared some of it out. That's celebrating, right?
Speaking of starting and keeping at it, I finished one knit dishcloth yesterday and am part way through a second one. I know those don't take very long, but they still take some time, preferably while I'm doing something else, like listening to the French podcast or watching a movie. If we don't go anywhere later I'll take the green and navy weaving off the little loom at the very least and tie off the warp strings, but maybe not weave all the other ends in.
my left hand picked up a pen today and I saw this little dragon nesting with rabbits in the scribbles
The Catalan is kicking my tail today working with some of the idioms and phrases
I read an article about how many words you know in any language, and of course, it was an ad for a kind of learning software that uses that as a term 'known words' and you mark if you know it or not in all the lessons they have. I used that software for Japanese for a little bit - but I haven't been back to it since it now wants me to join with a payment plan.
But I was thinking, after reading just a bit of that - how many words do I know in Latvian.... I know it actually is a lot, since I do the vocab program (which is free, BaltoSlav) and regularly score 60-80 in a session, with maybe an average of three sessions being what I mark as an occurrence on this chart. When I do the other program (Babadum) I choose to goto 50 or 100 or 200 points, which means I got at least that many (but maybe some duplicates) correct. DuoLingo only thinks I know about 4000 French words - but is it true, or do I know more? It feels like a lot more there - and many more than 3000 Welsh words. But in actuality, we usually use a small portion of the words we 'know' to actually speak the things we need to every day - unless you are a voracious writer of many topics. *eyebrow*
And I mean, I like charts. I was doing a Czech word list (that contained lots of declensions, forms of the same word) for Mark, but I'm not about to go counting them on my own for every language. Stands back and thinks about that... tempting, but no, at least not right now, I've got other things to do. // but maybe I could do a little book in several languages, if I get any ambition towards quantifying a set of words that would be good to make a set for. I just can't even keep track of flashcards anymore.
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