Plants and Prokofiev

[star_swan]

I mentioned somewhere that I would put up photos of my container garden so here it is with other random things, cut so that you can choose to look at it.



This is what it looks like as you walk out the sliding door:



Trees above that scene, looking out:



Cat interlude; Sir William :P



Crappy selfie:



More patio:



My favorite tree!



Hummingbird!





This is the best that my garden has ever looked! I am really hitting my stride this year.

So I live in an apartment complex that has had a barely functioning laundry. Each week a new sticky note would appear on one of the washers or dryers. It was like a bad joke. This has been dragging on for months. Finally yesterday I was beginning to wonder if I would need to go to this place in town, Laundry Lounge, as we were down to four washers and five dryers for the entire place, when a man materialized and fixed all of them in under an hour!

This made my week. I have never been so excited to do laundry.

Also, it is Sergei Prokofiev's birthday!! (Well, they changed from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar so...it is mostly his birthday.)

I am listening to all of his piano sonatas. I am on No. 8 of 9. :O
For anyone interested, I will stick links below to various recordings!

I really like his 5th Sonata . Here is Gergiev conducting his Fifth Symphony with a toothpick because he is a little cray cray. He is brilliant though. The second movement of this one sounds mechanistic. I love it!

And here is one of my favorites: Sarcasms! It's solo piano stuff where he has a bit of fun, a little too much fun? I just love that he wrote something "sarcastic".

Finally (cause I would be on here all day), I really like Tales of An Old Grandmother. The first piece is so wistful. It makes me think of the fading light on tall buildings. I want to play this one!!

More "what I've been up to" stuff on a separate post though it isn't drastically exciting. Mainly practice, work, errands, procrastination, mad plans, and tv shows. :)

Random question of the day: do you all drink tea and if so, what kind(s) of tea do you like? I really like Earl Grey and Russian Caravan. And how do you take your tea? I am a little tea mad.

Comments

[oraien]

I've had typhoo as well and really quite enjoy it, not quite as strong as the other though :D yay for tea and pretty tins, it's a really good coffee alternative. When I drank milk, I used to just mix a bit of heavy cream in. No need for sugar or anything else when I did that XD

I love coconut milk, and almond is really thin in comparison to cashew milk, which I also love. Never had TJ's soy though, actually- I will have to try it next time I am around the city!

It's funny that Bill's brother was a flame-point because 3 of Yoshi's siblings were all orange tabbys! I think Yoshi would just run and hide from intruders, but Kirby would probably puff up like an angry dandelion and try to scratch their eyes out, so there's at least some balance in it.

I am an eclectic "creative type". I mostly write but sometimes doodle, sometime photograph, sometimes sculpt, maybe dabble in paint a little but I'm not effortlessly talented or even really practiced-a-long-time talented. I just sort of dabble :)

[star_swan]

but Kirby would probably puff up like an angry dandelion

this is one of the best cat descriptions I have ever read!
I have pics around here somewhere of Percy. He liked to steal dirty dish towels and run off with them and the vet said that Siamese really like wool. Wish I could have know that before he chewed through some sweaters. :S
I remember passing the litter box, and smelling damp wool and saying to him. "Did you digest and get rid of my sweater?!I could have continued to wear that!"

He ate holes in parts of it. Weirdly, the wool was curled at those spots. I know that we have sugar breaking enzymes in our mouths...what the hell do cats have??

Dabbling is nice though. :)
It's difficult to find time for more sometimes.

[oraien]

Lava. Cats have lava and sandstorms in their mouths, I'm sure of it. *sagenod*

You'd have to meet Kirby to understand why I describe him that way XD He has no guard hairs like some cats do and his fur is UTTERLY soft and plush, much like a bunny or almost like a chinchilla? And when he gets worked up he PUFFS and gets twice his normal size and does, for all the world, really look like an angry dandelion!

Thankfully, we have no wool in our house, but I'm not sure Yoshi would eat it even so. He's a.... sensitive soul? You don't even have to yell at him to startle him and make him run out of the room, which I find funny and worrisome in turns because no one's ever actually hurt him or anything, he just really does not like being 'yelled' at?

I have exactly NO time for anything but sleep and work these days with the barn and my desk job x_X Sometimes I wonder what I've gotten myself into and then I'll be looking at Bridge and realize OH YES, THIS.

[star_swan]

I had to look up what "guard hairs" were. XD It sounded familiar. Percy, who passed away like almost exactly a year ago had a lot of those. He had this coarse upper layer. Bill is really soft as well. He rarely puffs up. His tail will get fat on rare occasions. Mostly he acts aloof like nothing frightens him. Or else he dives under the downstairs sofa.
Yesterday, he emerged and ran across my legs. Owch. I slathered it in aloe vera and it is mostly healed. :S

Our cats are like that! I wonder if they were abused. but we got them when they were three months old.

You MUST post cats pics. :P

[oraien]

I really do need to do an updated "here are the babies" post- since now we have a bunch of scalie things too XD

Yoshi never really puffs up much but sometimes he will look sort of "bigger" somehow. But the cat weighs almost 20 pounds so I really can't tell most of the time XD

Kirby's been sleeping on my pillow again since I've changed my barn schedule. He really hates it when I'm away from home and the husbeast is there alone. Even though he's PJ's cat, he loves me best XD

[star_swan]

He sounds so adorable!
Yeah, Bill is like my daemon (from His Dark Materials). He follows me everywhere. Literally. He will go off on his own but generally if I get up to leave a room, he wanders after me.

Yoshi is BIG. He's a siamese so some of that must be muscle. Good gods! :D

I look forward to future kitty pic spams! XD

[oraien]

I promise one of these days I will have enough time and energy to make a post and get pictures of our menagerie up! We've got SO MANY THINGS now, plus I really want to put up some pics of Bridge soon.

Yoshi is giant and if he is partially muscle he doesn't want us to know it. He'd rather be a limp noodle because he gets more belly rubs that way XD

[star_swan]

My other cat who passed, Percy, loved belly rubs! And tale pulls, oddly. If you try to get to Bill's belly, he bites. Unless you soften him up first. Lying in the sun makes him fairly amenable to belly rubs and extended periods of affection.

Me too! I need to make a cat pic post, a life about town post, a book gush. I uploaded pics to my photo album but I have been so scattered/busy lately.

I will look forward to your kitty and assorted animal photos whenever they arrive. :)