This time, I'm writing at a reasonable hour. I stay up late because my job keeps me up at night and I just can't rearrange my sleep schedule a few times a week. Hopefully the new Walmart going in down the street will give me a call so I can change that. I miss being able to wake up in the morning without feeling gross.
So, what's new...
Of course, my mind goes right to the balcony garden, but I can't help myself. I love it and I'll hate the winter even more this year.
The tea plant seeds have yet to arrive. They must be stuck in customs. Until they finally do, I'll keep checking every the mail box day. I want to plant them, dammit!
I thought I'd only be growing food, but on Thursday I caved and bought some flower seeds to bring in the bees. I planted dwarf varieties of marigolds and sunflowers. Today, three of the sunflowers poked their little heads out of the soil - so much for seven days to germinate! Sunflowers are my favourite flower and it will break my heart to have to thin them in a few weeks, but I suppose that's better than letting the roots get tangled.
The chamomile is starting to flower like crazy. I'm going to have so much tea by the time the summer is over. I'll have to buy a small window screen to dry the flowers on. Since I cut strawberry runner, the mother plant has blossomed like crazy, and even the baby has two buds of its own. I counted 24 strawberries - fruits, blossoms or buds - in total so far. I can't wait to eat them.
I had to thin the lettuce a week ago from three plants to two, so I put the whole plant I tore out on a sandwich. It will be a while before I can eat any more of it, but it was satisfying. I still have yet to figure out how to make a decent loaf of bread, but I'll get there. Eventually. The recipe I keep using and modifying calls for a tablespoon of yeast for one loaf, which I think is way too much. Once I figure it all out, I'm going to make a sourdough starter and start using that instead.
Aside from food and plants, I've been asked to substitute with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra for their concert on Friday. It's opera excerpts and it just so happens to include one of my favourite scenes in all opera - the Te Deum from Tosca.
Cornell MacNeil (RIP) was the best Scarpia ever. You can't even look at him - that's how you know he did it right.
Seriously, I'm excited. This makes up for that horrible production of Tosca that I saw in Rome with my high school. Never again will I regret being sober at an opera quite so much as I did when it was finally over. They say that if a theatre is about to fail financially, putting on Tosca will save it - not that one. I went to look it up later only to find that it shut down and now houses one of those "Occupy" movements that seem to have gone out of style now.
How bad was it? Well, the singers were good, and the set was decently decorated, but even the condensed version of Tosca was too ambitious for this theatre, which was better suited to the more economical genre of opera seria (a type of Baroque opera that was popular when the theatre was built). By that, I mean the theatre was too small. The pit could not comfortably fit a full-sized orchestra inside it, so they just used a bunch of keyboards. Just imagine how hilarious a timpani roll sounds on a keyboard! It was enough to ruin it.
The moral of the story: when you go to see an opera, call the theatre before you buy the tickets to make sure they are using a real orchestra. Not that you should have to...
One of these days I'll get around to taking pictures of the balcony garden. In the mean time, have a wonderful day, everyone!
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