§ While I know this specifically isn’t a tomato year in our garden, when I noticed a little volunteer tomato plant pop up next to our peas earlier this summer I decided I would leave it be. This week it produced our first two ripe cherry tomatoes of the season—a fun little pear shape, too.
§ I also made poulet yassa for the first time with a few just-ripened scotch bonnet peppers we’ve been growing. It was okay.
§ At work we started the process of emptying out something like 5,000 sq. ft. of museum space to clear the way for a brand new exhibition opening at the end of September. Very exhausting and quite exciting to see it all finally start to take shape.
§ In my off time I’ve been having lots of fun playing with lasers.
§ I ended up reading much less during my recent vacation than I thought I would so I’m only now half-way though The Third Realm by Knausgaard.
So far, at least, it has been structured as a re-telling of the events of The Morning Star—the first book of the series—from the perspectives of a different set of characters. I appreciate the fact that it makes the world feel that much more well-rounded and complete. At the same time, I’m starting to feel impatient waiting for things to actually progress.
§ I’m glad Clive Thompson brought my attention to a huge collection of public domain images out of NASA’s Ames Research Center. After some spelunking I made a silly collage out of a few of the images.
§ I’m also glad Jasper brought my attention to Mood, a fun indie camera app that basically brings Fuji’s film simulations to phone photography. It has replaced Halide as my second camera app.
§ Without warning, on Saturday morning an enormous, ~50 foot long branch fell off of a gigantic oak tree in my backyard, landing in the perfect spot to narrowly miss both my and my neighbor’s roof.
This has been an ongoing issue. Every so often a large tree-sized branch will crash into the yard. This was by far the largest though.
Unfortunately this means that the entire gigantic, 9 foot circumference, tree will probably need to be taken down soon. If any of the remaining branches fall at this point our roof is almost certainly toast.
§ Later in the afternoon, Caroline and I went to the local garlic festival. We skipped it last year but went back in 2023 which is where I got my start growing garlic. I picked up a few more new varieties to try growing next season.
