Sticks and carrots and D&DNext, oh my

Ah, the choices to be made.

The loaned strimmer is due to arrive shortly and with it, I shall do valiant battle against the knee-high grass that's sprung up overnight.  All is very well in the garden.  Everything is growing rather aggressively as a result of weeks and weeks of rain followed by a week of uninterrupted sunshine.  I would be very happy about this if I didn't feel a bit intimidated.  Having spent a couple of days last week attempting to use an actual lawn mower and largely failing, the strimmer is now essential.  Once the excess is off, the mower will probably work.  Please.  I swear I can see the brambles growing before my very eyes.

Don't take your eyes off it.

Being a firm believer in carrot and stick, the carrot will be twofold.  The return of the menfolk from Birmingham, laden hunter-gatherer like with stuff and the arrival in my inbox of the D&DNext playtest materials.

For those less au fait with this seismic event in the world of RPGs, 5e (or D&DNext as it is officially known) is the next iteration of D&D.  This is hardly a new process as the game has been reinventing itself consistently over the last 30 years or so, but this is very big news.  Wizards of the Coast have declared an open playtest on the new stuff and the aim is apparantly to win back the old guard as well as enthralling a new generation.

Depending on your viewpoint, 4e is regarded either as a brave tangent or a money-grabbing excercise in cynicism.  What kind of reception D&DNext gets may well have some impact on whether Wizards (or, more importantly their parent company, Hasbro) continue to support it.  Calling on the players to test drive the thing makes as much sense as anything.  It at least implies some level of desired ownership and this was a major failing in the 4e marketing scheme.  There the professed aim, admirable as it was, gave the distinct impression that we'd been playing it wrong before.  Now, I really doubt that Wizards brought out 4e with the intention of pissing off the gamer community, so any bridge building exercise should be taken in good faith.

At the most cynical level, it means free stuff to play with and I see no bad in that.

Besides, I've been promised new dice.  They'll need an outing.

To do list - 5 May 2012

·         Borrow strimmer from dear friend to flatten lawn.  Before it stops being a lawn.

·         Sew pilgrim badges onto large cloaks.

·         Trim three strangely squashy hats.

·         Find shawl to wrap baby in.

·         Re-bloodstain hand wrapping.

·         Run Act 1 of Faustus and make sure new Lechery knows what to do.

·         Measure Mephistopheles.

·         Take in Grisolan's trousers.

·         Make sure Akahale the dragonborn warlock is up to date and send to patient DM waiting for him.

·         Test-drive bruise and dead skin makeup for Accrington Pals.

·         Paint bed type structure.

·         Find three pairs of rogue boots - i.e. the ones we had before the great boot crisis of May 2 which have now disappeared into the props cupboard.

·         Update games with entertaining treasure items.

·         Check rules for impending test drive game for some lovely bloggy friends.

·         Re-write Malfi programme in English and with correctly spelled names.

·         Make more blood pellets.

·         Find another jacket for goaler.

 
Sometimes I think my life might be a little strange.

As you were

Trapped in the strange limbo of the A-Z challenge, I've nonetheless been doing other stuff this past month.  Even if it doesn't feel like it.

First, a warm welcome to the new followers and friends.  This is where reality hits and you all discover just how tedious and ranty I can be.  To give you fair warning, this blog's title is not merely alliterative.  It is descriptive.  Who'd have thought?

Drama - is my bread and butter, so you get a lot of stuff about rehearsals, casts, costuming, directing, performance and so on.

Dice - gaming is another passion and I currently run four online games using D&D 4e rules.  It also covers my attempts to build an RPG setting.  Mikelmerck.  So dearly loved, so often the bridesmaid.

Damsons - is a kind of catch all phrase for my ongoing attempts to organise my home and garden.  We have a damson tree which fruits heavily and is a kind of emblem for the chaos that ensues when I try to keep things under control.

The next few days are going to be interesting.  At the end of this week, the Malfi cast have their final rehearsals and then perform on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.  Based on recent efforts, the audience will have a treat in part one and a horrible let down in part two, so that needs to change fast.  I am no believer in things being all right on the night.  I prefer solid preparation, but then I'm stodgy like that.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, some of the cast appear to think differently. 

Costuming for Malfi  is on target with the exception of boots.  I need many, many pairs still.  Failing that, we may just have to go with black shoes, but it will be wrong and will grate horribly.

Dream option

Likely reality

First though, I need it to stop raining long enough to mow the blasted lawn.  Unfortunately, I have a special relationship with the weather gods.  If I even think about getting the mower out and finding the extension cable, clouds rush to my aid and prevent my doing anything so energetic.  While this is a great excuse, I'd like to get the grass cut before it becomes impossible to find my way into the house.

A is for me and asparagus

A

First letter. First post in 2012 A-Z challenge.  Best wishes and good luck to all who participate in it.

It also begins my name.  I'm not the biggest fan of Amanda.  It's an OK name, to be sure, but it always sounds a bit flabby to me and I deeply hate "Mandy" as an abbreviation.  Hate to the point that I simply blank it out as something I don't hear at all.

On the other hand, it could have been a great deal worse.  My father wanted to call me Cybora, in honour of cybernetics.  Mum did not approve, nor did she much like his alternative, Amaryllis.  She felt that naming a baby something that meant "little tinkling stream" was a bad idea.  Since she was around for the birth and he was not (busy having dinner somewhere - a story which is a microcosm of their relationship), she got her way and went with Amanda.

Mind you, I'd probably take Cybora like a shot now, but I'm glad I didn't have to get through school with it.

A is also for asparagus.  Fortuitously, we spent part of this morning planting the crowns.  Hopefully they will produce delectable vegetable spikes of goodness sometime in the next three years.  It's a slow business growing asparagus.  Patience and a deep compost filled pit are required.  We dutifully dug what looked like a narrow grave, filled it with manure.  Planted the crowns, watered them, hoisted the soil back over the top.  Now awaiting results.  Asparagus crowns look like diseased sea urchins at high tide.  Time, we hope, will turn them from this -

to this -

Weather gods

The weather gods were clearly paying attention.

Not half an hour after the fruit trees were settled in yesterday, it started to snow.  Not settling snow by any means, but those big white flakes that look pretty.

I clearly do have some impact with the weather.  Usually inconveniently, I must admit.  Once the grass starts growing, I only have to think about mowing the lawn and clouds will gather to chuck rain all over it.  Anyone in possession of a lawn will know that mowing when wet leads to backache and ripped turf.  Hence the hayfield we often have instead of neatly cut grass.

This time, however, I can feel suitably smug.

In the nick of time

Just, just got the fruit trees in on time.

Planted this morning as sleet fell.

A braeburn, a bramley and my longed-for humbug pear have all been bedded down in well dug soil, primed with the world's stinkiest manure.

Roses pruned.  Clothes changed (as it seems unfair to the Twelfth Night cast to have to be enthusiastic about a Maria sporting eau de manure).

Note to weather gods:  you may now snow.

Onions and sewing machines

Today's task list is charmingly domestic.

Onions must be planted before the ground becomes (a) too cold and (b) too soggy.  The second has probably already happened, but this is North Yorkshire and soggy is a way of life.  More to the point, it is also foggy, making it quite difficult to see the potential burial site. 

The onions are but the start of a many pronged attack on - I'm not sure what.  It's not self-sufficiency, that's for sure.  La famille Rev have neither the discipline nor the inclination for goat herding and chicken keeping.  I have been trying to persuade Mr Rev to let me keep a couple of sheep as lawnmowers for years, to no avail.  Likewise my pleas for bees.  He is, of course, right about both, but I keep asking like a whiney toddler.  Note to self.  Stop doing that.

Returning to the original point, the great vegetable assault is mostly part of an attempt at healthy eating with the added sense of virtue of having grown it ourselves.  Since we have a viable vegetable patch, and already grow masses of soft fruit with little to no effort, it seems silly not to try. 

The other item on my personal to-do list is the sewing machine.  This is on loan from a wonderful lady at the theatre and I've been putting off the inevitable tantrum I'll have when I find I can't thread it.  Nonetheless, the effort must be made.  The carrot is simply that I won't have to hand-sew costumes for 50 people spread over 3 shows.  The stick is that I will have hand-sew costumes for 50 if I don't get my head around it.  My fear of technology seems particularly ridiculous at this point.  And come on - a sewing machine?  How terrible can it be?

(I'm not going to talk about the last time I tried to thread a sewing machine unaided and stitched myself to my own clothes).

Suddenly it's summer

It's very odd.  The last couple of days have been warm.  Really warm, as in teeshirt weather even for the non-hardy.  The qualification is necessary as we live in the tough north and for a lot of the population even a blizzard doesn't stop them from wearing midriff-baring tops.  What is even more bizarre is that I've been hearing fairly consistent rumours that October (due to arrive tomorrow) is scheduled for snow.  Mother Nature is playing some pretty strange games.

Friday sees me driving up the A66 to Bowes where I run the Drama Club and will shortly be beginning work on the nativity play (and I'm not going to whine about that until I have to).  Normally Bowes is the last bastion of wind-chill.  Anything resembling wind, rain, snow or frost hits it incredibly hard even when the rest of the county is reasonably unaffected.  Today it looked and felt like the kind of rural idyll Rupert Brook had in mind.

I did the obvious thing and hauled the whole class out to their amphitheatre.  I have mentioned that Bowes is a very pro-active school and among other things they have a very functional vegetable garden backed by a small amphitheatre.  Overlooking the hedge are a pair of brass giraffes.  I hadn't see them before and they were a bit of a shock.  "Oh - them," a helpful parent kindly enlightened me, "our Tanzanian exchange programme."

Over the mild surprise of two life-size brass giraffes, we went on with the session in which I got them to demonstrate as many appalling things to do on stage as possible.  It was a hilarious session and quite an informative one.  By the end they were putting their hands up and bellowing "She's looking at her feet!", "I can't hear her!", "She turned her back!", "We can hear them offstage!", "They don't know their lines!".  "So do you think you can do better than that?"  "YES!!!".  We'll see.  The nativity will be the acid test of that one, but some of it may sink in.

Our own vegetable and fruit tree order has just gone in.  Two apples (Bramley and Braeburn), a stripey humbug pear tree, some asparagus crowns, many onions, shallots and garlic for seasonal planting, many potatoes (first early, second early and maincrops), parsnips, cabbage, strawberries and probably some other bits I've forgotten.  Look upon the Humbug pear and be amazed.  Love at first sight.

Plants

Another plant and seed catalogue arrived this morning.  Excitment!  We can put in a proper order rather than just optimistically looking at the tangle of dying bindweed and giving up.

We do have a vegetable patch as well as a soft fruit bed.  It's a proper garden, ours.  We are far from properly equipped to look after it, but we do keep trying.  Efforts this year are made much easier by the team of gardeners we employed over the summer to dig out as much as possible in three days.  This extended to four days and wasn't finished, but it does look very much better.

There are two parts to the incentive.  One, we can actually accomplish something without despairing completely and giving up two trowels in.  Two, having spent quite a lot of money on getting the place sorted, it seems a wicked waste just to let it all happen again.  Bindweed, begone!  Dandelions, drop dead!  Creeping Buttercup, crawl away!

Hence our joy at the arrival of the catalogues.  It's a whole world of arcane mystery.  So much choice.  Do we take the long route and grow from seed, even though we have no cold frame or cloches?  Do we cheat a bit and buy starter plants?  Which types of potato will be best for a near to year round supply?  Leaving aside the whole vexed issue of salad v main crop, there are earlies and second earlies.  If we order now, we can get better deals on early onions, shallots and garlic, all of which overwinter well and exist in varieties which do not attract onion blight.

Among other things, looking at the list of stuff available has reminded us of how many vegetables we eat and enjoy.  This is despite years of looking sadly at each other and going "Oh, we must eat more veg."  Turns out we eat quite a few.  And of course will do so in enormous quantities if we end up with the list we're putting together.  It does feel virtuous.