Another shot of the clustered container garden, 2024 edition. The sun's out again this morning after a day of welcome rain, but it's chilly, only 48F at this writing. It will warm up to the mid-60s, very pleasant, and the rest of the week will continue this warming trend --- but I've got to figure out something not too cold-making/not too hot-making, to wear out to a morning coffee with a friend having a birthday today.
Otherwise, the week promises much the same things that the weeks always promise: essay-writing, reading, housework, dog-walking, and the like. I've acquired some neem-oil spray for the garden and might go out and spray the areas that always seem to develop powdery mildew, as neem is a fungicide as well as an organic insecticide (kills and repels things that want to eat the actual plant, but not --- I don't think --- pollinators).
Looks as though the best time to do this is the evening, when the bees are inactive, to avoid spraying them by accident. Again, they would need to eat the plant to be harmed by it (nectar and pollen don't count, mostly because the spray wouldn't touch those parts of the plant), but being caught in the spray directly would suffocate them. Fortunately most of my garden plants, especially those most susceptible to powdery mildew, aren't flowering yet, so now (not right this minute, but a more general now) seems a safe time to spray, from the bee angle, at any rate.
Both pairs of wide-leg linen trousers I bought (secondhand) last week are due for delivery today, but probably won't get here before I leave for this morning coffee gig. Dresses have been so very much my brand for the last several years that I actually feel a little anxious about adding these trousers into my wardrobe, but we'll see how they fit. I don't want to be too rigid in setting even inadvertent rules for myself, or expectations, or whatever --- I am a free person, as apparently it is necessary that I remind myself. Meanwhile, I also remind myself how much I wore, for years and years and years, three pairs of wide-leg drawstring cotton-sheeting trousers I'd bought at Target while we still lived in Memphis (so pre-2008, by several years at least). I did finally donate them a year or so ago (at least one pair was still in pretty good shape; they just didn't fit me as well at that point), but have missed having something like that in my closet.
BUT I've got to get dressed this morning, in clothing actually in my closet at this very moment. Looking over the Style 2024 album, to see what I haven't worn lately . . . a method that works as well for me as keeping a spreadsheet, by the way. I can simply count how many times in a given time period a given piece of clothing appears and have some idea of how I'm wearing it. No need for more record-keeping than that, I don't think.
So . . .
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Teal, bought November 2022
This represents a little milestone: my layers have grown enough that they mostly don't stick out awkwardly, but are caught in the scrunchie. Also, I think thanks to the amount of collagen and protein I ingest daily, I see a lot of new hair growth around my hairline, where it tends to thin. I'm in a phase of hair fallout right now, noticing a lot more hair coming out whenever I wash, but a) it doesn't seem like an abnormal amount for such a phase, and b) I see constant new growth, rather than bald patches.
