Caffeine: the most potent artificial intelligence drink!

Caffeine: the most potent artificial intelligence drink!
Deep in the Lair of the Perpetually Curious Fox

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Evil Plot part II

Dalek Gardener!


As promised, some more photos of the Evil Plot from my watering today. The tomato (this particular plant is called Mrs. Robinson) has really bad sunburn. Didn't give it enough time to harden before I put it outside full time last week. She's called Mrs. Robinson because she's the first of the batch to "Graduate" to the outside world from inside the indoor nursery.


The pepper plant is also badly burnt. They are showing signs of new leaves forming though, which means they'll pull through.

Too much sun for even the sun-loving peppers!

Carrots are appearing
A whole bag of Mesclun Salad Mix is starting to germinate!

There will be more greens than I'll ever know what to do with. Good thing the local Food Bank accepts donations

A whole crop of peas are poking through. Will need to build a frame
to support the plant in a jiffy before they climb out of the Plot

Onions! Plenty of Onions!

Randomly scattered Amaranth seeds have sprouted over the potato planted in the middle trough.
They will be harvested soon and make way for the potatoes green that will poke out of the soil in a few weeks

This might be more spinach ... will know when the true leaves come out.

Spinach transplanted last week has already bolted! Shocking! Might harvest this tomorrow and plant some chard in it's place

I love Swiss Chards. They taste so much better than spinach, anyways.

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Strolling around Yellowknife

Some days I don't have many words to say, and just let the photos do the talking.
Evening sun over Frame Lake, just outside the City Hall.



I'm not the only one out for strolls. Other foxies do that, too!

No, he did not go Ring-ding-ding-adinga-ding, either.

I might just take up Lichenology just for fun. The sheer amount and diversity of lichens here is amazing.

A Foxnukshuk
A species of Saxifrage. The name came from the Latin words: Saxum (Stone) franga (breaker). They are prevalent in holarctic region and does what their name describe: Break Rocks .... albeit very very slowly

More Lichen. Historically, the area of Yellowknife is within the path of roaming caribou herds who subsist on lichen (and other shrubberies), but with the hunting pressure in the region, the herds now steer clear of Yellowknife and roads... and lichens go absolutely nuts everywhere. No one else eats them, as far as I can tell.

Monday 16 June 2014

The Evil Plot continues

Hello! Hello!

Spring has sprung:
It lets you know
with noses bunged,
and snot that flows!

Indeed it is spring/summer here, and as implied in the poem above my sinuses suffer greatly from it! But despite that fact my snot flows, my eyes itch, throat feels raw and I sneeze endlessly like someone with the 'flu, the garden monkey is swinging around in the garden.

I did cheat and planted a bunch of sunflower seeds indoors in end of April, and indeed they bloomed nicely last month:
The Anne Marie (named so after a friend who looked after it while we were away 2 weeks in May)

A friend fostered her seedlings at our flat as we have a south facing window, and the plants simply mutated and grew all Triffiddy in the light, despite the fact the temperature was below zero (at night) until 2 weeks ago.


Peppers and Tomatoes galore, ready to take over the world!
This year we managed to get a garden plot in the communal growing area. A decent sized 6.9 by 2.1 m (odd size, I know). Would have preferred it to be a bit narrower so we can water the middle easier, but it'll have to do.

The soil was very poor, sandy and depleted of organic material, so into it went 40 x 20kg bags of well composted Sheep Manure, 5 x 20 litres equivalent bags of sphagnum moss, and additional 50kg of Steer Manure (supplied by the communal garden organiser). A lot of turning of soil ensued. It was hard work, partly because the provided (depleted) soil was frozen at the core still when we got the Shit (haha!) together.

Several days of foeces flinging and jokes about how much Bullshit goes on in the garden .... and waiting for the frozen core to thaw...

The first things to go in was Potatoes! A whole bunch of Yukon Gold potatoes buried in the middle trench (where it's awkward to water properly), surrounded by a couple bulb thickness of red onions.


In the meantime, a whole bunch of seeds were sown in toilet rolls and egg cartons. Admittedly I had to buy the black seedling trays just so water don't seep everywhere inside. Seedwise, it's all seeds that I had from 2 years ago. Didn't get a chance to do any gardening last year due to the C. Difficile problem. Still recovering from that, even after technically being "eradicated" of the colonies in the colon (ha! I joke!).

If you ever get C Difficile superbug, get treatment, pronto. That nasty stuff can kill you in days if you are immunologically impaired. Even post-infection, it still takes a big chunk of your energy away, not to mention being completely dependent of having a toilet nearby (within 2 minutes, I'd say), 24 hours a day.

Toilet Rolls, egg cartons, fruit cups, yogurt containers, not to mention an instant noodle box, all are suitable seedling containers
Enough shitty stories, so after a couple of weeks, they looked like this. With exception of the Fluffy Black and White Thing on the Fluffy Cream Thing. That was not grown from seed. That is the Grumpy Cat of our Apartment. He hates having to share sun space with plants. He ate a few seedlings, too.


Transplanted the egg carton seedlings into the yogurt pots after they grew true leaves. There's something oddly calming about obsessing with leetle teeny seedlings...

Getting a bit crowded in here...
A lot more photographs of the garden plot to come, I'm still figuring out how to transfer the photos in my phone to here.... but as of Thursday 12th June, the peas sown into the garden on Monday (9th June) have hatched. The Plot gets plenty of sunlight, now that it's close to summer solstice, and this far North, it's roughly 21.5 hours of light a day! And a lot of watering. Lots of it! Otherwise things start to dry out and die ....

Promising a better tomorrow! :)

Friday 6 June 2014

summer time

It has been a while since I wrote. It is finally summer here and I have been busy minding the multitude of triffids that are slowly taking over every flat surfaces that gets decent sunlight.

I have also been out for several walks since the temperature has gotten warmer. Not serious  d>10km distances that I usually do from years past. A mere 4km walk is enough to make me become useless for the rest of the week. Such is the power of C difficile in turning your life upside down!

I've amassed a pile (in bytes) of photos of my current city.