leene_chan | Potted and ready to go.

I finished potting all my vegetables, finally! They're all sitting outside on the top of the metal alcove that leads into our basement (our best escape route in case of a natural disaster). Since I fertilized them with Neptune's Harvest, a disturbing fish-scented breeze is wafting in through the windows. :O

Fun Fact: Eggplant are particularly susceptible to soil-born diseases. It's actually better for them to be grown in pots.

I know that they're harmless, but I'm alarmed by the amount of crane flies bouncing around outside our house lately. You know, those bugs that look like giant mosquitoes? They're actually in the same family as daddy long legs. They don't bite, but they sure are ugly!

About my poppies...I should have just dumped the seeds into one of the gardens and taken my chance with the birds. You can't really sow them inside in pots. I got a free packet of Pink Confection fringed poppies from Select Seeds, and I just threw them into the side garden with the strawberries. Most of the seeds have already germinated, and they look like they're going to take. I have been a fool. Unfortunately, Pink Confection belongs to the class of Weird Poppies that aren't that pretty in my opinion. I'm hoping that the breadseed poppies I have coming in a few weeks will flourish and reseed themselves. Lauren's Grape in particular is quite beautiful.

I made a strange discovery in my front border this weekend when I was watering Pink Delight. A sunflower seedling, in the beginning of May! XD I didn't even plant it! I have no idea where it came from. I did try to grow sunflowers there last year, but all the sprouts got eaten. I've never heard of a sunflower failing to germinate the first summer, only to come up the following spring. This is really odd. Maybe it's a good omen? I hope the birds leave it alone...

On the writing front...well, I've been writing again. I've been having a hard time, for a very stupid reason. Somehow I managed to poke a microscopic hole in the thumb of one of the rubber gloves I wear when I wash the dishes (which I do frequently and fun-ly, everything that doesn't fit in the dishwasher). The little water that's been leaking through the glove and wetting my right thumb has made the skin all red and cracked. It hurts like hell to hold a pen! I have a new pair of gloves now, but it's going to take some time to heal. Maybe it never will...;_; It's thanks for my predisposition to this type of skin problem that I can hardly ever knit.

I've been working on my character surveys, which are turning out to be more like character "bibles." I'm noticing that there are some characters that I love to write about, and others that I don't. I'm not sure if this is a failing on my part. I'm not the kind of person to fall in love with antagonists. A small masochistic part of me might admire certain narcissists from afar because of what they've accomplished, but when it comes down to it, jerks are jerks. I enjoy writing about people with human flaws, but if there's no gentleness inside them, I have a hard time falling in love with them. I don't mind characters who are hard and demand things from themselves as well as from other people. Is it really so bad to admit that you're writing and a novel and while you've worked hard to make the characters into human beings, some of them have become human beings that you don't particularly like? I can list a few personality disorders that are linked to people I don't like. Narcissistic, for one, and Borderline. I can forgive Avoidant and Dependent, because they only harm themselves (and I have some of those traits myself). Histrionic people drive me nuts, but sometimes I feel bad for them. I guess it's only natural that I would start assigning disorders to characters in my writing. I just don't think it would be right to start correcting these "flaws" just because it would make me not want to hang out with them. Everyone has a right to exist in the world, even if they are jerks...