Technology and gardening
Gardening wins.*
Pooka, as previously observed, has a battery life that is always looking for bridges to jump off of. I’d wound her back up to one hundred percent last night before I went to bed. This morning I had errands to run (with attendant hellhounds) so we were a good twenty minutes into our hurtle before I was ready to plug in for my top-up of Japanese**. I stuck the headphone jack in, turned her on . . . and discovered she was down to ELEVEN PERCENT. This is about twelve hours after she’d been at 100% and the first time I’d turned her on.
Meltdown.***
Upon calm, considered reflection, I think what happened is this: I am still gnawing away at this app that refuses to download off my computer and onto a device where I can frelling use it. Preferably the iPad. So last night, in bed with Astarte†, I asked her technology what the problem was, and she claims she needs an update. I looked at the specs in the app store and . . . okay, requires IOS 5. Feh. But . . . I’m a little freaked by the update thing after the first time I updated Pooka she froze so solidly I needed an archangel to unfuse her again. I do get ‘wanna update?’ messages on Pooka occasionally, and I’ve been ignoring them till I have a list of stuff and it’s worth sacrificing an Eveready bunny rabbit and examining its entrails for the perfect time to supplicate the archangels. I have received no such blandishments for/from Astarte. I didn’t know there were any iPad updates.
THIS IS A STUPID SYSTEM.
But it’s even stupider than that, if I’m right about what happened. Because when I turned Pooka on today, and found her trying to redline on me (again), there was a little message box saying, ‘This app won’t download without an update. Retry?’ So I assume what happened is that my fossicking around in Astarte’s innards somehow woke up the equivalent gremlin in Pooka’s, which started blindly trying to download this frelling app. Again. And again. And again. And again. All night long. All morning long. Till I turned Pooka on and interrupted the endless, useless, ridiculous loop, just before she sizzled herself out into exgizmo-hood and became a pink paperweight.
THIS IS A REALLY, REALLY STUPID SYSTEM.††
However, I did get out into the garden for maybe two hours this afternoon which was excellent. Foiled of my gladiolas††† I got all my pansies planted, the snowdrops I never quite got around to planting in the ground last year‡, and potted on a rhododendron and a day lily. By this time it was pretty well pitch dark out . . . but one of the advantages of a tiny garden you know very well after seven years is that you can pretty much garden by feel. Ow. Mostly.
* * *
*I can truly not suppose
A gizmo lovely as a rose.
With apologies^ to Joyce Kilmer.
^ But not very many. It’s a dire poem. ‘A tree whose hungry mouth is prest/ Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast’? Huh? I cannot help but think, in my vulgar, literal-minded way, that the anatomy here is suspect especially when you also have a tree wearing a nest of robins in her hair a stanza or two later. EWWWWWW. This one’s right up there with that other paradigm of poetic inspiration: ‘A garden is a lovesome thing God wot’. Lovesome? Since the second line cites roses, if in a meretriciously plonking manner, it pains me to reject it, but it would pain me even more to keep it around.
This, however, almost makes it worthwhile: http://wordsmith.org/words/godwottery.html Godwottery. Indeed. A word for regular use.
** I was going to try to figure out ratbag in katakana for you, which is the syllabary used for borrowed foreign words, but I still haven’t got the Japanese writing system(s) installed on this computer yet^, and furthermore I’m reasonably sure WordPress will have a nervous breakdown. We’ll try it some evening. But not tonight.
^ One of my sources says it’s easy. Me and technology? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
*** Ee, ah, eeee, ah, eeee aaah, eeee ah. Standing in the middle of a country lane, singing at my smartphone while hellhounds pretend they don’t know me. Are there no depths to which eccentric artistic types will not plunge? Speaking of batteries and bridges. Yes, someone saw/heard me. They’re moving out of town tomorrow.
† You may take that any way you please. If you prefer you can replace it with: in bed with Chaos and Darkness.
†† It’s official. In the McKinley Standard, Apple is every bit as stupid as alternative OS technology.
††† Planting my glads, that is. Which are now instead in a tense, slightly gravity-defying huddle on top of the little refrigerator, since Atlas did take the Winter Table down today and I haven’t got any place to put them.^ However Hannah and I will be able to sit at the kitchen table at the same time. But I hope there isn’t a fire drill. And you have to open and close the refrigerator door gently.
^ He also found several more potential bat ingresses to block up.
Diane in MN
And yes, I have ordered the mosquito netting to drape over my bed. Just in case.
Hopefully you have ordered a nice supply of garden mesh for your guest, too. Just in case.
I did think of it, but I decided against it. My bed is a four poster—the infrastructure is already in place for swathing and swaddling. Not so the fold-out sofa. And I boggled at the idea of buying the agricultural frame for the mesh to drape over. There is a lack of ground to stick the pegs in, in my sitting room, you know? If I find myself inconveniently bebatted I will either escort my gibbering, hand-wringing visitor to Third House at an unseemly hour as necessary^, or she can spend the rest of that night in the other side of my bed^^ and spend the next night at Third House.
I knew there was a reason I bought a third house.
^ You do get used to small furry flying visitors, as you will remember from last year, but they do remain startling when you find one in bed with you.
^^ After I clear books, journals, iPads and/or hellhounds to make space
‡ Snowdrops’ unwillingness to thrive in pots is exaggerated.
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