Tag: microblog

Two plants!

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My first succulent arrived, along with some potting soil.

I repotted my umbrella tree, and planted my succulent, which is an Echeveria. I think the pot I have for the Echeveria is wrong – it needs one with a wider opening. Whoops!

My plant window is looking good!

I’ve never liked getting my hands into dirt, which is funny because my mother is an avid and very successful gardener. But I enjoyed sitting on my porch and playing with these plants. I think I’m going to buy more and really get into apartment gardening. I mean, why not? I’m home!

Suggestions for cute plants are welcome!

The Return of Coffee

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Well, I never really stopped drinking coffee.

But for the longest time, I wasn’t making it.

I love cold brew. When I lived in Brooklyn, I became an ardent supporter of “iced coffee season.” Basically, on the first warmish day in April, you order an iced coffee, and then that’s it: it’s iced coffee season, even if the next two weeks are cold enough that a warm coffee would feel good on your hands. Iced coffee season is an absolute once you’ve made your commitment.

(I have a theory about coffee and New York City, by the way, which is that the city’s tumult and close quarters are simply easier to take with something in your hands to occupy you. I think having a cup of coffee in your hands is similar to having a cigarette: it’s something to fiddle with, something to do that isn’t meeting people’s eyes or accepting that you are a tiny ant in a vast swarm, something to stop you from having a constant series of existential crises.)

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a season in Florida which isn’t iced coffee season; plus cold brew is easier on your insides (did you know that? it’s less acidic) and I have always had a tendency towards ulcers and nervous tum. The downside is that it is generally higher in caffeine. I have to drink less of it, or my hands shake. A few years ago I started buying Chameleon Cold Brew’s concentrate and having one every day, usually in the afternoon to keep the after-lunch snoozes away. When I started working late nights at Disney Springs, I’d have a cold brew around five or six PM to keep me going until two AM.

Now I’m home all day, working on my computer, and one day I remembered a pleasure from my old days before I took up iced coffee: the all-day pot of coffee. Back when I had the farm, was writing Retired Racehorse Blog every day, working on The Head and Not The Heart, raising a toddler, and also working at Disney a couple nights per week, I worked my way through a pot of coffee from morning until late. I decided a constant cup of coffee at hand was exactly what my lockdown days needed!

black coffee with dog in background

I like my coffee black.

Of course, in those days I was happy with whatever the seasonal roast from Starbucks was. Now I decided it would be fun to get more adventurous. I wanted to try small roasters. It would be great to support small businesses during this economic downturn, for one thing, and for another when it comes to hot coffee I have developed a much more demanding and pretentious palate. (My husband and I used to go around Brooklyn tasting small-batch roasts like other people taste wines. I’m not ashamed.)

I did a lot of research and ended up with a coffee subscription from Trade. There are a lot of coffee subscriptions; Trade was the one that worked out for me. They pull from small roasters all around the country, they match up your flavor profiles and tell you ahead of time what’s coming, and they give you the option to change it out ahead of time if you’re particularly into a certain roast of coffee. Also they don’t charge for shipping. And I have to tell you, when you’re ordering two bags a month, shipping can add up.

The first bag that came was the fabulously named “Darkness” from Gimme Coffee, based in Ithaca, NY. I know there are a couple of Gimme Coffee cafes in NYC but I’ve never been to them, so this was a totally new blend for me. Trade sent me an email when it was roasting and then a few days later my coffee arrived. I ground up some beans and HELLO! Absolutely fantastic. Dark chocolate with a little cherry to finish. Marry me, Darkness.

gimme coffee

Darkness by Gimme Coffee. Yum, y’all.

I have something new coming next week, but I know that Darkness will feature in my coffeemaker again really soon. Another reason to like Trade: some subscriptions are always surprises or curator’s choice, but they let you sub in whatever you want.

Having an all-day pot of coffee has been great and I’m so happy to have gone back to it. I don’t tend to finish it in an afternoon, but that just means there’s some cold coffee leftover for the morning! Since I’m a born napper, it’s helping me work through the whole day so that I can actually fall asleep before midnight and get up early enough to go run… basically, rewiring my night owl rhythm to fit in with Florida weather and the realities of lockdown sidewalk traffic.

Well, this was supposed to be a microblog but it’s a solid 800 words. I guess that’s what happens when I write about coffee!

April Storms

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Hey, it’s day two of microblogging!

Today was actually really interesting. A big cold front moved through early this morning. This is about as late as cold fronts manage to push through Central Florida – by May, they’re pretty much too weak to make it this far south. This was a particularly strong storm system, creating tornadoes and hail damage throughout the southeast.

For some reason cold fronts love to hit the Orlando area overnight or first thing in the morning. I knew this one was due around dawn, and at 2 AM our NWS weather alarm woke us all up to tell us there was a Tornado Watch for the area. At 6 AM, I woke up suddenly. Nothing seemed to have caused it, but I got up and roamed around the apartment, looked through all of the blinds, glanced around the kitchen. I just had a funny feeling.

I went back into the bedroom and looked at my phone, and saw an extremely strong line of thunderstorms just about thirty miles west. I tried to close my eyes again, reasoning that the weather radio would wake me up if there was a tornado warning, but I noticed lightning flashes coming from behind my closed blinds and thought, no, this is silly. 

So I took the dog out.

I know, that sounds crazy, but actually it made perfect sense: the storm front was still an hour away, and the lightning I was seeing was from a secondary line which had set up ahead of the front and was moving away from me. Plus, the dog was going to need to go out right when it would be storming. I was a problemsolver.

storm clouds approaching

The storm front approaches from the northwest. This was after the dogwalk!

It had been a while since I’d gone out and been surrounded by clouds that are just lighting themselves up with lightning. It was still very dark and very still, with just a few sleepy frogs croaking, and I enjoyed that walk very much. By the time I went back upstairs, fed Sally, and went onto the porch to observe the clouds, the storm front was much closer, while the secondary cluster of storms was in full swing to my south.

storm clouds april 2020

Half and half, looking east

It didn’t end up being a terribly bad storm front in my neighborhood – cold front-induced storms have an interesting habit of hitting their weakest point from when they first cross over land near Tampa just as they reach my town, and then they tend to pulse back upwards as they move a little farther inland. For me as an observer of clouds and lightning, this actually isn’t a bad thing. It lets me get great shots before and after the storm.

storm clouds 2020

Still before any rain has fallen, the roll cloud pushes through and cuts off the dawn. Looking southeast.

The all-day rain with occasional thunder that has followed is a very rare treat in Florida. We’ve been dealing with a drought since the beginning of the year, and I think all the animals and plants are very grateful for today’s cool temperatures and constant rainfall. I know I am.

Just six more weeks to rainy season!

I got a tree!

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Hi friends! I thought microblogging might be a fun experiment to play around with. I’m a solid five and a half weeks into stay-at-home life, and my only record of this weird period of human history is my insane tweets. Why not do some insane blogs, too?

Today I am excited about my tree, which arrived by post yesterday from the idyllic-sounding Hacienda Heights, California. I know it’s in Los Angeles County and probably isn’t idyllic, but what a name, right? I love the breezy romanticism of early southern California Americans. The citrus trees, the terra-cotta tiles, the boundless optimism. Early 20th century Los Angeles is a beehive for me.

Anyway, my tree arrived and she was looking a little worse for wear at first, but now her leaves are uncurling and she seems quite spritely. I haven’t named her — I kind of got out of the habit of naming inanimate objects and I’m not sure if that’s going to come back or not — but I have already initiated pep talks so that she knows I am rooting for her (that’s a plant pun!) and want her to grow up big and strong.

umbrella tree in pot

My new tree and her horse friends

She’s an umbrella tree, by the way. I ordered this one from Amazon because the reviews were half-decent, the tree described was a good size, and I liked that it came with a pot, so I didn’t have to buy soil and a pot as well. I’m on a budget here!

I grew up with an umbrella tree in the house. When I was in elementary school we moved to Florida from Maryland, and the umbrella tree was eventually planted outside, by the front door. This happened to be where water poured down from the eaves during Florida rainstorms. Was this on purpose? I have no idea. But this tree grew and grew and grew into an umbrella giant during our time at this house. I was always so proud of it for doing so well outside.

So when it became clear most of my life would be working from home, not from a cafe or from the apartment complex workspace or by the pool (by the way, March and April are THE work-from-the-pool-deck months and I am sad to be missing this), a new corner of the living room was set aside for Natalie’s Office, and I declared the window sill to be Natalie’s Garden, and this is where my lovely little tree lives. There’s a succulent coming this week too, and I’ll show you that plant when it arrives!

Well, I’d better get on with the business of writing fiction now. Think of me and my tree sitting in our corner, enjoying the midday light, and know that new books are happening!

Do you have a plant? What kind, and why do you love it?