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It’s time for another dilettante tabletop gardening photoset!
All of my peppers, Sunday 9/7/2014
I have accepted that not all of my pepper plants are going to produce peppers. The two in the gray circular plastic pots got their buds knocked off and have not regrown any. The one in the lime-green plastic pot is the one that went all funny at the growing top, probably from a pesticide overdose. (It also used to be in a terracotta pot, but it either fell or was knocked over a couple days ago and the pot broke. I repotted it before it could dry out, but the shock didn’t do it any favors.)
But setting aside those failures, I have four plants that are currently growing peppers, one that is currently in bloom, one that has a couple visible buds, and a bonsai pepper that may yet surprise me! So you know, all in all I have not done too badly.
Next year I am going to plant my seeds in March, though, and apply anti-squirrel measures from the moment I move the seedlings outdoors. I would like my plants to be a bit further along by this time of year, because regardless of Ithaca’s lake valley microclimate effect, you never can trust the weather. *sigh*
( more pictures behind the cut! )
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In other news, today was Sundae Sunday -- aka, the first regular church service after summer's end. It also doubles as our Water Communion celebration.
Services this fall and winter will be a little odd, since our minister announced his retirement quite abruptly earlier this year and will not be giving many (maybe not any?) of the sermons. I believe the plan is to do a lot of congregational soul-searching, since this is the second... um... irregular ministerial job termination we've had in the past decade.
I think the main problem is that the old long-term minister who retired in the later 1990s got a lot of congregants used to really exciting and well-delivered sermons. Then, for inexplicable reasons, the next two ministers called -- Rev. Sears and Rev. Grimm -- were fairly pedestrian and/or repetitive preachers. This created an obvious source of tension. (In Rev. Sears's case there was also, IIRC, some conflict with the office staff. I personally liked Rev. Sears a lot, but that may have been because he was really into campus outreach and small group ministry, so I got to know him by talking with him on a personal level instead of listening to him talk at me on Sunday mornings. I was not attending services at that time.)
I have not been much involved in these issues, since my main point of contact with the church has been the RE program and thus the quality of weekly sermons was irrelevant to my spiritual life. But since I'm not teaching this year, and since I would like to stop being embarrassed by my congregation's high maintenance reputation, I think I will try to attend more congregational meetings and so-on -- if only to keep a finger on the search committee's progress.
*crosses fingers, hopes for minimal idiocy and circular arguments*
All of my peppers, Sunday 9/7/2014
I have accepted that not all of my pepper plants are going to produce peppers. The two in the gray circular plastic pots got their buds knocked off and have not regrown any. The one in the lime-green plastic pot is the one that went all funny at the growing top, probably from a pesticide overdose. (It also used to be in a terracotta pot, but it either fell or was knocked over a couple days ago and the pot broke. I repotted it before it could dry out, but the shock didn’t do it any favors.)
But setting aside those failures, I have four plants that are currently growing peppers, one that is currently in bloom, one that has a couple visible buds, and a bonsai pepper that may yet surprise me! So you know, all in all I have not done too badly.
Next year I am going to plant my seeds in March, though, and apply anti-squirrel measures from the moment I move the seedlings outdoors. I would like my plants to be a bit further along by this time of year, because regardless of Ithaca’s lake valley microclimate effect, you never can trust the weather. *sigh*
( more pictures behind the cut! )---------------
In other news, today was Sundae Sunday -- aka, the first regular church service after summer's end. It also doubles as our Water Communion celebration.
Services this fall and winter will be a little odd, since our minister announced his retirement quite abruptly earlier this year and will not be giving many (maybe not any?) of the sermons. I believe the plan is to do a lot of congregational soul-searching, since this is the second... um... irregular ministerial job termination we've had in the past decade.
I think the main problem is that the old long-term minister who retired in the later 1990s got a lot of congregants used to really exciting and well-delivered sermons. Then, for inexplicable reasons, the next two ministers called -- Rev. Sears and Rev. Grimm -- were fairly pedestrian and/or repetitive preachers. This created an obvious source of tension. (In Rev. Sears's case there was also, IIRC, some conflict with the office staff. I personally liked Rev. Sears a lot, but that may have been because he was really into campus outreach and small group ministry, so I got to know him by talking with him on a personal level instead of listening to him talk at me on Sunday mornings. I was not attending services at that time.)
I have not been much involved in these issues, since my main point of contact with the church has been the RE program and thus the quality of weekly sermons was irrelevant to my spiritual life. But since I'm not teaching this year, and since I would like to stop being embarrassed by my congregation's high maintenance reputation, I think I will try to attend more congregational meetings and so-on -- if only to keep a finger on the search committee's progress.
*crosses fingers, hopes for minimal idiocy and circular arguments*
