ultrasupergenius’ journal

Stock photo of my garden
from late this past winter…
I need to get some updated pics!

I watered both Sarah and I’s gardens last night. Everything looked good - but certainly needed a good drink after that hot day yesterday. I wound up trimming some more of the stargazer lillies that were looking a bit long in the tooth. The process of watering weighed down the stems with the blossoms, so I cut a bunch to get them back up. Sarah has lots and lots of blossoms on that plant… Quite the overachiever. (It takes after its mom).

On my way out of the garden, I stopped by and grabbed some leaves off of Sarah’s lettuce plants, and made a nice salad from them for dinner. It was kinda plain without any tomatoes, spinach, peppers, or cucumbers… or zuchini… but it was still quite good. There is a lot of garden fresh salad in our future. I just can’t get over how much better Sarah’s lettuce has faired than mine… I think that I have planted about 8 heads of romaine lettuce and have not gotten a single leaf in return… not to mention some of those went into the ground about 6 weeks ahead of her three (down to two after someone apparently lifted an entire head out of the garden). Her two romaine plants are about ten times bigger than all of mine combined. There was a bit of a fiasco with the majority of my lettuce, however. It is likely that I am slowly going to lose it all…

I bought Sarah some new strawberry plants this weekend, and planted them in her strawberry patch. They are the same ones I had gotten that were showing lots of berries… I am going to consider the strawberries in her garden to be “Defensive Berries”. They defend my strawberries from getting gobbled up. Sarah is going to have to make it out to the garden soon if she wants to get the first of the ripe berries from her patch. The new strawberries already have some starting to turn red. Oh, and I saw something this morning where they had some fresh strawberries and some mint to go along with them… I am thinking that strawberries and mint in ice cream, or with whipped cream would be amazing… I think that we should have an ample supply of both this year. The entire plot next to mine is overgrown with mint, and it is spreading to my plot (where it promply gets harvested).

All of the peppers which were trying to grow got trimmed this weekend. I ate a small green pepper and a couple of jalepeno peppers. They were great - and the jalepenos were spicy. The idea is that you keep them from flowering now and they can focus on growing… then they wind up producing a lot more in the long run. Same thing with tomoatoes. I trimmed the remainder of the tomatoe flowers from my plants. So hard to do. The cherry tomatoe plant by the front gate had some ridiculous amount of flower/bud/tomatoes on it… I cut about 5 or six flowering vines, and there were about 20 flowers on the larger one. Each of those flowers will become a tomatoe. That plant should provide some serious cherry tomatoe eating action this summer. I have let my Rutgers tomatoe plant grow two tomatoes… No sign of any ripening on them yet, which is good because that means they can keep getting bigger. The smaller of the two is around golfball size, the larger - perhaps a bit smaller than a raquetball, and also not quite perfectly round. Sarah seems to think that is not a good trait - the not perfectly round thing. She was making fun of my tomatoe. Bollocks. It looks perfect to me. The growth seems to have slowed a bit, though… Or perhaps it is that the tomatoes are not growing along the pace of my expectations. I might have to come up with some sort of measurement process.

Apparently, the Germans are the polar opposites of the eskimos. (Sorry - but yes, pun intended). I am sure that you are aware by now of the fact that the inuit (eskimos) have some fantastic number of words which all mean “snow” - but break it down into fantastical levels of detail as to what particular type of snow it is. Pretty darn obsessive compulsive if you ask me - but then again, it is a long hard winter… so I guess it makes sense that they would have to be doing something.
So why are the germans the polar opposites of the eskimos? Because they have a word in German which sums up all that is good in one word. Yep. They have one word which, according to the dict.cc English-German dictionary, has ALL of the following meanings:
super
choice
famous
signal
superb
eminent
jutting
salient
shining
terrific
saliently
brilliant
exceeding
paramount
prominent
preeminent
first-rate
outstanding
conspicuous
magnificent
superlative
pre-eminent
surpassingly
distinguished
pre-eminently

And what is that word?
HERVORRAGEND
What a great word. I have no idea whatsoever how to pronounce it… but it is indeed a good word. A very very good word. A good good good word.
If you have any interest in hearing someone speak in German about stuff that probably has something to do with hervorragend, with a nice little piano playing in the background - you can go to http://hervorragend.com/. I have no idea what it is that they are saying. I don’t think that they actually use the word hervorragend either - unless the pronunciation is funky. But in general, the fact that they chose a URL that means so many good things would lead one to believe that they are talking about good things. Very very good good things. With a nice little piano soundtrack in the back.

I am pleased to present - Ryan and Stacey Shea! The wedding was absolutely beautiful. It was in a secluded cove at a resort on the southeastern coast of Oahu, only a couple of hundred yards from where I had seen my first (and second, third and fourth) sea turtles the day before. It was a perfect day in paradise as Ryan and Stacey got ready for their wedding, and they exchanged their vows as the sun began to set over the pacific ocean. It was gorgeous.

Congratulations to the Sheas!

While I have not uploaded many pictures yet, there are some to be found here on my flickr account… and I plan on adding some more as I get the time to edit them.

It is 4 am on Saturday morning. In six hours, I hop a flight to Hawaii. I can’t sleep. Not even close. So many fun things ahead. Why go to Hawaii? Ryan and Stacey’s wedding. It is going to be amazing. They are doing a ceremony on a private beach a little ways away from waikiki. this is really exciting. As long as I have known them, they have been Ryan and Stacey. At first, Stacey was the quiet one. Heehee. Just try and shut her up now… So funny how time changes things.
Speaking of time - this isn’t my first time going to Hawaii. It has been 25 years since I left - but I spent three years of my childhood living on the island of Oahu. I have some very fond memories. I am going to try to track them down.
a) Ouchie grass behind 383c reaznor road (our house)
b) The ghost of bird graveyard
c) The yard where “ginger” the puppy lived
d) The off-limits trail where wild boar were rumored to live - but we only ever found mongoose
e) A hill with weeds overlooking the island down to the ocean where my mom stopped the car and told me to remember the view. I remember the view, and thinking “This is stupid. I am waay too young to remember something like this”.
f) Matsumoto’s Shave Ice. And vanilla bean ice cream
g) Tripler hospital - the big pink building
h) Moanalua Elementary - my alma mater. and the drinking fountains out behind the playground that would shoot bursts of water that looked like frogs leaping, at least to an imaginative 5 year old.
i) Moanalua Park. There was this old man I would watch walk along the carp pond whistiling, and the water would boil with frenzied carp activity beside him as he walked along. I would watch him durring recess.
j) Shark’s cove. And a magical ring of boulders in the water that shielded me from big waves were perfect to jump from.
There are a lot of memories that I know I can never see again - that only live in my mind… like my Stormer bmx bike, or the Hose out in front of Lee’s house. The fort we built out of palm fronds in the front yard. Actually, I watched the MPs come and pull that down about two hours after we made it… that bastard Mr. Picket called in and complained. Even nani and kalohe, our two cats. They are nothing but memories now. They stayed on the island. There is some wierdness going on with that whole situation - I don’t think it is something I need to dig too deeply into. Like all of my memories of that place, they are gone now. But I get to go back and experience them once again in a way that someone who has moved around his entire life seldom gets a chance to. This is so crazy. I get to go home.