crafty_packrat

Last night I went with greenygal, the Vegan Knitter, and A Person To Be Pseudonymed Later (aka Euterpe) to see Madame Satan, Cecil B DeMille's only musical at the AFI.

It was fun, though the male lead character does not deserve his awesome wife -- she's so much more interesting than he is, because he's just keeping a vaudevillian as his mistress, and she's willing to crash at the mistress' apartment, force her husband's friend Jimmy to keep up the charade that the mistress is actually his new wife, and when that doesn't solve the problem of her husband's straying, she crashes the masquerade ball that Jimmy is hosting on a zeppelin in a regal and extremely reveling dress as 'Madam Satan', who speaks with a French accent and captives her husband away from the mistress.

There is an extended dance sequence with 'Electricty' that is definitely influenced by the robot creation scene in Metropolis, and was performed by then-famous dancer Theodore Kosloff and an ensemble dressed as gears and mechanisms.

The film abruptly veers into a disaster film as the zeppelin gets caught in a thunderstorm and has to be evacuated via parachute. The film was made in 1930, which was after the USS Shenandoah disaster, but 7 years before the Hindenburg disaster, so the disaster in the movie is based on the Shenandoah, which crashed in three pieces.

The sound quality of the film and the singing styles of the time also means that I missed most of the words of the songs, but it still made sense without them.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Charm Thai and discussed how you would remake the movie today -- consensus was, we'd absolutely have to change the ending, possibly by having the wife and mistress run off together.

This morning, I went with ellen_fremedon and the Vegan Knitter to the Brookside Gardens Spring Native Plant sale -- they picked up some plants to replace the dawn redwood sapling they had to take out of their front bed before it grew big enough to damage their home's foundation and to replace a hosta and a boxwood in the back. I picked up a miniature rose, a stonecrop, a gold-edged hen-and-chicks sempervivum, and a pot of lance-leafed loosestrife (which has a lovely bronze color).

We swung by the Ace Hardware to get some leaf mould fertilizer and then by my place to pick up my garden fork, and then went to their place to get the boxwood and hosta out -- which was a lot of work, as the hosta was actually mass of hostas that we had to excavate around to get out. The soil here is mostly clay, so we mixed about a third of the bag of leaf mould in before putting the native plants in the ground.

Got up early and planted most of the plants I bought at Thorne Farm last Sunday. 2 Islander bell peppers (purple skin), Buena Mulata (purple hot peppers -- for salsa morada), 2 New Mexican green chiles (1 Joe Parker, 1 Anaheim), 1 Chiltepin, 2 tomatillos (1 purple, 1 green), and some basil.

I also planted the marigolds I bought yesterday. This just leaves the container eggplant, the cherry tomatoes (Black and Sungold cultivars), and the Fish peppers and the tomatoes I've grown from seed to plant.

Then I took a shower and did 4 loads of laundry, including my gardening gloves and clothes, which were pretty dirty from all the work.

I plugged in my seedling heating mat and rehydrated some coconut fiber jiffy pots today. I started four each of:

• Fish peppers


• Mortgage Lifter tomatoes


• Purple tomatillos


• Sweet Chocolate bell peppers


• Homestead 24 tomatoes


• Cisineros Grande tomatillos

I have more seeds for more cultivars, but I do want to get seeds for Buena Mulata hot peppers and Abraham Lincoln tomatoes before I get more trays of jiffy pots set up.

Today I started more seeds in my little seed-starting set up.

Queen of Malinalco garden berry (it's tomatillo-adjacent Solanaceae)
Aji Charapita hot pepper
Succotash bean
Buena Mulata chile
Naranjilla (now that I've actually had lulo agua fresca, I definitely want more of these)
Spacemaster Cucumber

If evertyhing germinates and makes it to the transpant seedling stage, I may have to give some of these away. But that's a worry for another day.

Today I planted flowers -- specifically the dozen marigolds and one nasturtium I bought yesterday. I turned over the flowerbeds with my garden fork, and planted the marigolds alongside the walkway, and the nasturtium in a nook between overwintered onions.

Normally I'd have gone to Maryland Sheep and Wool this weekend but it's canceled. I can still check out the vendors, and there is an Online International Fiber Festival to peruse, but it's not quite the same as wandering around the fairgrounds, looking at stuff and eating cinnamon-candied pecans and pit lamb. I definitely won't be getting a flat of chile pepper and tomatillo plants from Thorne Farm, which means that I have no idea what vegetables, if any, I'll be able to plant this year.

Spanokopita, portokalopita, macoun and nittany apples, purple bell peppers, sweet snacking peppers, fresh paprika peppers (for experiments!), fish peppers, beef bolognese sauce, spinach and ricotta ravioli, fresh pasta, and a bagel.

The bagel was from Call Your Mother deli, which has finally got an automated rolling machine, which means they can make and bring 1150 bagels to market, instead of a mere 400 hand-rolled bagels, and thus don't run out before I get there. Still, there were only 7 left when I bought one, slightly more than an hour before the market closed, so I think they're going to regularly sell out even with the increased production.

I'm hoping that I didn't miss the Esopus Spitzenburg apples this year -- they were extremely tasty -- but I worry that they succumbed to fireblight this year, just like my favorite Doyenne du Juliette pears did two years ago.

Also, looking around, I realized the pepper with the tiny round yellow peppers that had been shading out everything else is the Aji Charapita I bought on a whim in spring. I should harvest the bush and try drying them.

I picked half a pound of buena mulata chiles today, which will go into my batch of salsa morada.

I also picked a few fish peppers, to make peach salsa with, and cut back the tomatillo, which are of course enormous and shading out the other plants. If they'd just droop in the other direction, everything would be fine, but tomatillos never cooperate.

My anaheim greens seem to have enough on them to make chile verde at least once. I'm not too sure about the pasilla, but I can get that dry if I really want to tackle mole negro this year. The shishito peppers are going great, so I foresee a lot of dishes of dried anchovies and eomuk in my future.

I'm supposed to go to Synetic Theater's Wizard of Oz tonight, and I just might melt before I get there, given how hot it is and how badly the Metro is messed up right now...

Went to the market yesterday

Blueberries, blackberries, sweet cherries, pie cherries (yay!), strawberries, snap peas, bluefish empanada, salmon empanada, NY strip steak, milk, Mocha Moo, portokalopita, tiropita, spanakopita, flourless chocolate cookies, citrus olive oil cake, melitzanosalata, crème fraiche, and key lime greek yogurt.

Also bought the following plants: a dozen marigolds, two strawberries, and a rue.

Made strawberry honey lime thyme jam today.

Half-gallon of Mocha Moo, cheese curds, pink lady apples, a quart of strawberries (yay!), and several plants -- 2 foxgloves, 1 purple coleus, 1 sempervivum, 1 kalanchoe, 2 basil, 2 5-color Chinese ornamental pepper, 1 fish pepper.

The rain is still hanging on, but I hope tomorrow to be able to work on the flowerbed with the mint -- it's wet enough that I hope to pull out a lot of the mint and start putting in squash, corn, beans, and sunflowers.

4.1 lbs of pork boston butt, baby spinach, baklava, pita, tiropita, spanakopita, pink lady apples, quart of Moo Mocha (coffee/chocolate milk), pint of raspberry yogurt smoothie, dried pasilla negro and dried ancho chiles from ShePeppers, a dozen regular eggs, and a dozen pullet eggs.

Plants: 3 fish peppers, 1 aji charrapita pepper.

The woman I bought the plants from said that her first batch of buena mulata pepper seed didn't sprout. She's going to try again, so hopefully I'll be able to buy from her. I've also ordered some seed, and will try to start my own plants. I hope to have 4 to 6 buena mulata pepper plants growing this year, so I can finally make salsa morada.

I'm making carnitas and casamiento today, but I'm hoping to make one or more of the more complicated moles over the course of the next few months.