freyakitten

• Filled one compost bin, emptied and half-filled the next
• Planted watermelon and rockmelon seeds - pumpkin planting will occur when I have finished weeding the patch of semi-wasteland which is the soon-to-be-pumpkin-patch.
• Observed the flat-leaf parsley growing out of the leaf mould in said semi-wasteland. Said leaf mould was acquired from my parent's house, where they have parsley self-seeding not-quite-rampantly. Also observed some interesting white-leafed plant which I vaguely remember from their yard, but can't remember what it is.
• Harvested an armload of rainbow chard
• I has strawberries
• Also another third of a bucket of peas to shell

Saturday there was a series of dance workshops, and then a dance party. I made an executive decision that I was only going to go to the last one, the aerials workshop, for reasons of energy conservation and safety. It was fun, but I overused my tummy muscles, and it hurts to laugh, sneeze, and breathe deep. Everything is crunchy, all my joints crack, my arms and back muscles are also protesting, and it was very worth it.

Yesterday there was finalising of tax, and sending thereof off over the internets. Five minutes after I had sent off Bastard's and was finishing off mine, Bastard walked in and found a mistake. I'd halved the results of an investment we made, assuming that it would be evenly distributed between us, having not fully read the blurb on the front page which said it had already been split and that was why we each got a copy... So there was downloading and printing of amendment forms from the ATO website, filling in thereof (surprisingly non-painful - including downloading and printing time this took maybe half an hour, and I was chatting via IM to another dancer about how much we hurt at the same time). They're in the post now. It'll reduce Bastard's refund by about AU$250. Which sucks, since the ATO gets more twitchy about not getting its money than about having to pay you more. I hope we don't get fined for this - we shouldn't, since they haven't paid us yet, and I referenced the relevant eTax lodgment reference number thingy, but they might.

• beetroot
• leeks
• garlic
• pretty-coloured kale

They're in the large bed that last held broad beans, which is good for they all like nitrogen, as well as each other. I must remember to put in a winter crop of peas somewhere on ANZAC Day. And I need to find something that'll cope with the semi-shade of the bed nearest the fence bed.

For persons who don't read vegetable gardening books as obsessively as I do, kale is to cabbage something like what radicchio is to lettuce. Same family, acquired taste. Even if I decide to not acquire the taste, the seedlings I got are supposed to turn out with pink or red new growth, instead of being purely greyish-bluey-dark-green. At least, I think that's what the tag was describing. The lady who served me seemed to think the pink bits were flowers, but kale only has flowers when, like lettuce, it has bolted and is no longer potentially tasty. The pink bits looked to me king of like the red bits of poinsettia. Mind you, she also thought that they weren't edible in any colour. Strange for a seedling found in the midst of other vegetable seedlings. Maybe she doesn't read the same books as I do.

One of these days I have to find me some Fat Hen or King Henry (both pre-spinach European greens). I've only seen them sold as produce in the Ventral Markets once (yay for Queen of Green), and have never seen seedlings or seeds. Tasty things, apparently easy to grow, and higher in nutritional value than spinach.

Last night, my SO was slightly upset. He had taken a shower with a redback. So he makes his usual annoyed comments about pigsties and how if I were tidier we wouldn't live in one. One of these days I shall get up the courage to retort "Why don't you pick up after yourself, then? Half of this is yours. Put the junkmail straight in the bin instead of on the floor. Don't leave your dishes in the loungeroom and expect me to pick them up. Do the dishes occasionally when I cook dinner. Then there wouldn't be a pile there waiting for you to wash them." If I cook dinner for the pair of us, I refuse to do the dishes anymore. If I'm cooking for just me, it's ok, I'll do it, but when I come home from work, tired, to find him asleep in bed, and cook dinner for us both because I need to eat regularly, I'm not going to do the dishes as well. And I'm not going to cook on grotty and greasy dishes when he doesn't realise that the grease in the water has overwhelmed the surfactants. Actually, I'm not sure that he doesn't realise, he may just not care that the bacteria in that grease is going to send it rancid (there is an example of this on the draining board at the moment - I can see that what was washed in the water before the pot in question contained meat and tomato based pasta sauce, probably with cheese). Then again, I'm a little fussy about things like that. When I can see grease floating on the surface of the dishwater, it's either time to change the water or add more surfactant.

And there are a lot of papers spread out over the spare room/computer room. It's just that I know that this is not the reason why we had a redback. The rain yesterday after the hot dry days recently is far more likely to have caused the spider to have moved to a more sheltered spot - ie in the shower.

And I'm not going to snipe at him this week. He HAS been doing the clothes (not the ironing, and stuff for ironing gets put in a heap in the clothes basket with everything else instead of being hung up immediately, but it's the thought that counts) and sanding the plaster that he filled the electricians' holes in the walls with several weeks ago, and he watered my new lemon tree this morning.

Next week, however, is a different story.