who only by moving can balance

Reading. The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern: reread complete! As I've been muttering: I picked up lots more of the interweaving this time through; I still don't understand what's going on at the end (and on the one hand recognise that's the point and on the other would actually like to); and I have a whole bunch of feelings about resonance, and the Keeper as in "time" and "inn" and "bee". I went digging around in some reviews, and found at least one I disagreed with profoundly; I'm now mulling over The Nature Of Reviews, and the ways in which I find it much easier to make lists of things that are wrong (and why), or to do a point-by-point demolition of a negative review (as in literature so in my professional life, sigh), than I do to go "and here's all the things I loved!" I want to think about that and work on that. Possibly there's something about immersion and flow; things that jar me are easier to identify discretely and point, because I've tripped over them. I gain ever more admiration for those of you who do, you know, actually review.

Metal Like Blood in the Dark, T. Kingfisher. Soothing short story; yes thank you I will.

Getting started on both Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman; on loan; needs returning imminently) and The Things I Would Tell You (edited by Sabrina Mahfouz; a library loan of an anthology of writing by British Muslim women).

Writing. Mrrf. 6210 words. This does not feel like it's been a very productive week, but I do keep shuffling things around and that does represent a bunch of bullet points --> sentences conversion.

Watching. CXG S01E10 I'm Back At Camp With Josh! Josh continues TERRIBLE. Rebecca continues a disaster. I continue very fond of Heather.

Hackers (1995). I... I don't even know. I don't even know what I just watched. But hurrah for baby Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie! And also: WHAT EVEN.

Listening. TMA 179. I am very curious about how other people (who, crucially, aren't me) experience Frank Voss' voice acting for Basira in terms of characterisation. I am enjoying the things that are going on here with resonances, both explicit and not. The anonymous body in the cart, contrasting with the bodies Basira has to identify; Jon's emotional closeness with Daisy, because she didn't ask for forgiveness -- his granting Daisy the ability to hurt him emotionally, in the Before -- being what allows her to hurt him in the now, in the After, because that's how dream logic works.

Playing. Utterly ridiculous PoGo Community Day: twenty-two shinies, and none of them better than 73% IVs, but also I'm super into the Very Purples Porygons. I am a fan of Mega Pigeot (BLUE TAIL BITS); I am not a fan of having got a lucky 100% IV normal Raticate out of a trade with A; I'm extremely ??? about my 98% Shadow Turtwig.

Horn: honking merrily away to myself. Still outraged by how much quantifiable improvement more practice makes in pretty sure order.

Growing. I have had another 3kg of tomatoes, for a total of over 20kg so far since the beginning of August. (I've made another ~1.5l of passata, too, per yesterday's post, and need to work out where to store it...)

I've also harvested: a Sad Sweetcorn (didn't get adequately fertilised); more patty-pan squash; a courgette; probably some cucumbers; onions as I go along.

Pests & diseases: I'm experimenting with culling Dubious Looking bits of the potatoes aggressively and early; we'll see if I manage to keep them from dying of blight. I have aggressively cut back the tomatoes and will try to keep the remaining outdoor plants going for as long as I can. On the upside, I did recognise the incipient powdery mildew on the various squash before it got too far advanced, and treated it accordingly on Saturday; I'll try to drag myself out to the plot tomorrow and we'll see how things are recovering.

Combing along: more tromboncino; two luffa fruit; more chillis and peppers in various configurations; root veg (some of which appear to have survived the ignominious transplanting!).

Sown and otherwise propagated: onions (red and white), spinach, savoy cabbage, pak choi. All direct. I'm not expecting great things of any of them, but they're more likely to grow in the ground than they are in storage and I can learn things for next time. I continue harvesting the odd Sugar Magnolia pea-pod and am up to 24 seeds to go in the ground next year. I did the whole proper tie-the-flower-closed-then-hand-pollinate for one of the patty-pan fruits, because A is sufficiently into them that they're worth growing again next year. And I fermented and then rinsed and dried a tomato's worth of seeds for the Purple Ukraine, so I can hopefully grow more of those next year as well. (Not terribly high-yielding, and less purple than I'd hoped, but tasty enough to be worth it, I think.)

Starting to think about winding down to maintenance-and-infrastructure for the winter, which is a little alarming, but so the wheel turns. Determining how to balance "it's exhausting" and "it's so good for me" is also a work in progress.

Plants, though. Gosh it's nice to be eating a bunch of stuff I've actually grown.