The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Two weeks ago the public transport authority moved a whole bunch of goal posts.
While the bus services to some of my lurking grounds are now a lot more frequent, I still had to do some major rearrangements.

Unless I don’t mind a 20 minute walk from the train station that I used to go to in order to get to the plant nursery, I now have to catch a train 10 minutes earlier and get the new bus at the station where I get off which is on the new airport line.

I tried it out on Friday and figured that I may as well cross a few more bus routes from my “To Do” list. One of these is a circular route that goes to the domestic terminal of the airport. The last time I set foot near the place was way back in February 2002 when one of the sons of my Fairy Godmother came to visit.

There has been assorted developments and a few mining booms since that time. Fly in Fly out work is a big thing and a major source of custom for the domestic airport.
It was completely unrecognizable from its former state.

( Boom and bloom )

I barely lurk in Cyberia at all these days. Not even on Twitter. Even then it is usually to catch up on and of course snaffle the latest David Rowe masterpiece.

( Monsters and weeds )

The Izzie has been busy lurking around the lair tossing things and doing bits of decluttering. But today’s grand plans concerned green and growing things

Due to a certain public holiday and needing to use the broomstick as transport to the daily six hours of house elf servitude, decided to save all the coffee crawls for tomorrow and Friday and return to the Lair without the usual detours.

After scrubbing the scales and an early afternoon snooze in the garden, the remaining hours of daylight would be devoted to mixing up soil for the big fat green vegie bags, planting out some newly acquired specimens of chili and most importantly the handful of cloves of garlic. It is so so hard to find local stuff these days. There are claims a plenty but at this time of year sprouting is the best sign that the stuff is really kosher. And sprouting is especially important when the purpose is for planting

Always managed to get big fat lush green leaves and would occasionally chop bits off and nibble them or fry them with olive oil but had never been able to actually get the cloves to set. They always managed to fizzle out and the soil would go all dry and water repellant

In this bit of Oz, the dark side of the equinox is when the gardening season really begins. This includes the assorted open gardens and the annual Garden Week expo. That ran from last Thursday to Monday just gone and largely explained the serpent absence from Cyberia. Spent last Wednesday evening and Thursday evening too over at Petunia’s place and we both went to the garden show on Thursday

It is simply not the same ever since the ABC and their utterly adorable Peter Cundall and friends gave up their association with it several years ago. It got all too commercial and there was too much hard sell and not enough useful unbiased gardening advice. But this year was a big improvement. Growing your own edibles is becoming a seriously big thing now that no one has any space anymore. The sorts of people in that scene are greenie, hippie, organic and permaculture sorts who are not into the Big Sell.

( Garden Week, seeds and weeds )

For a long long time, managed to keep away from those infernal institutions of temptation known as public libraries.

Got so many books in boxes and shelves in the Lair that a lifetime would not be long enough to read them all. But for some inexplicable reason, other people’s books always look more interesting
Gawking at the recently returned offerings in the Fremantle library just could not go past a rather worn looking copy of a book by Stanley Milgram - the Dr Milgram of the infamous ‘learning experiments’ in the 1960s. There was also the book “Merchants of Doubt” about the reuse and recycling going on amongst the big tobacco lobbyists and their spin on science
Done little more than peeking and realized that the time to get some reading glasses is going to be sooner rather than later.

Then the serpent found herself slithering into yet another public library last Thursday. That little first chapter booklet of “The Hunger Games’ had whetted an appetite for more. Most unlikely indeed as there would be lots of cheapskate sorts thinking exactly the same thing as Izzie. There were however plenty of a certain vampire series still on the shelves and even the Vampire Diaries. Thanks to the Cat for the tip off not to bother.

So still wanting a proper spooky story, headed to the old reliable middle alphabet section of the mainstream fiction offerings. Found something interesting that wasn’t the size of a house brick or the weight of one either. It is hard to believe that the book “Carrie” is 30 something years old.

Today was time for some more cheap entertainment. There was a 3 hour “Great Gardens’ workshop in the local council hall. These workshops are free as they are sponsored by assorted environmental organizations. They are trying to get locals to give up their habits of lawns, obsessions with English style gardens and plants which are completely unsuitable for our climate and especially the addiction to nuking their gardens with all sorts of chemical quick fixes which invariably find their way into the rivers and waterways

But the hall being right next to a library, the chances of slinking straight on by were next to nil. Firstly wanted to book a place on next week’s free author’s talk “How to live a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget” and secondly wanted to see how long the reservation list was for those terrible tales from The Capitol. It was 16 for the first and 3 each for the other two books.
Of course just had to peek at their collection of Stephen King stuff. They had the one we never expected to find “Desperation” Unfortunately it is a bit of a brick.

It is strange how all the glitterati sneer at Stephen King stuff but so many of the nanowrimo folks are fans. One was describing her favourites with brief descriptions of the story lines. One about a spooky abandoned mine site pushed all the right gloom and doom buttons. Had taken the odd peek in libraries and second hand book shops here and there but no trace to be found. It seemed to be gone and forgotten and fallen down the mine shaft along with the other book “On Writing” that is much lauded in squigglers’ circles but is never on the shelves

So now greedy Izzie has got a choice of two spooky stories for Good Friday. Carrie is ‘slim’ and the daughter of a born again Christian so her chances are pretty good. But having already started reading last week, it doesn’t quite count. So will maybe just bring both to read while sitting outside the old historical graveyard on the hill on the eastern end of town
Tomorrow will be visiting the annual art exhibition in the Wesley Church in the city. For the last few years they have commissioned 14 different artists to do the stations of the cross. Last year was the first time seeing it. The Stations of the Cross could be kind of described as Tarot cards for Christians.
One of the artists this year is an 'out of the closet' atheist so his interpretation should be intriguing.

So with all the books, gardens, art works and this week’s ‘street art festival’ in Fremantle, there should be no excuse for lack of inspiration in the next few weeks

Izzie is pottering around procrastinating and doing bugger all really. Yesterday's grand plans for some serious gardening turned into a snooze fest and today was not much different. Did manage to plant the five or six baby banksias bought about a week ago.
Also noticed that the half dead macadamia nut tree now has lots of new leaves on the bare branches and the little catkins seem to be getting quite fat. Here's hoping they'll turn into little nuts. Maybe the potash and fertilizer made a bit of a difference

Tomorrow evening will be slinking off to Fremantle to visit the Living Smarties and friends monthly meeting about the art of using up excess tomatoes - making tomato sauce most likely. Here's hoping there's no yeast in it. The ginger beer that we had plans to slurp with lots of ice cubes blew up last night. The bottle stopper did not fly off. The bottle simply gave up the ghost and split its sides spilling the precious contents all over a stash of of real and rather purple garlic and all over the kitchen floor.
Looks like next time will be plastic bottles sitting in the laundry sink.
Like counting chickens before they hatch, the Izzie's tomatoes are not much more than a packet of Diggers seeds planted last Saturday. There's still several more packets in the stash - mortgage lifter, Amish paste and the 30th anniversary collection.
Will also be needing to plant some basil seeds too. Seriously addicted to the stuff in all its incarnations. Diggers also have stone pine tree seedlings but the quarantine nazis will not let them over the border in spite of letting all sorts of dodgy toxic waste masquerading as food coming in from the so called People's republic of China.
There are some stone pines in one of the city's central gardens. Twisted an ankle in the shade of one of them last year. But never been able to find any cones from the critters.

Other than catching up with online gossip, spent yesterday's computer time deciding that it might be a good idea doing the Scrivener tutorial. Been using the thing for a couple of years or so but never really play around with it much. Turns out that most of the bells and whistles are just that. Nice little extras but not necessary for a simple squiggling serpent such as Izzie.
Having one document that can be broken into smaller sections but still having a word count for the total and autosave were the only features that Izzie really cares for. Cork boards, index cards and pretty pictures we prefer in their old fashioned incarnations.
And the present incarnation involves 88 index cards with three possible scenes on each - one linked to the chapter theme and the other two to the card before and the one after. Here's hoping this list of 260 or so scenes will be sufficient to generate 50,000 words without too much effort. A streamlined and logical progression from one scene to the next would be an added extra. Still stuck on finding the golden thread to link everything together
Maybe what we need is a packet of Bippolo seeds
On the topic of the good doctor, how can one resist the temptation of a book described as a sex manual written by Dr Seuss?

Tomorrow will start on generating those 260 something scenes. Must keep Dr Seuss and friends in mind while plotting and planning.