Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Death Star Strikes Back

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Lennie turns out to be a Star Wars fan. A couple of months ago, we somehow got on the topic of Star Wars, and she had many questions. We answered what we could and then deflected to various aunts and uncles once we were over it. She’s persisted in wanting to watch the movies. This is the girl who had previously not been able to watch Ratatouille because it was too scary. Yes, the animated children’s movie by Disney or Pixar or whoever.

We had told her, after much pestering, that she could watch Star Wars after she turned five. Two or three weeks ago, we were at the movie store, and she brought the movie up again. So we got the first one (technically the fourth one, but the first one that was made), and she loved it. She wasn’t outwardly afraid of Darth Vader or even the shooting, though she was curious about all the shooting. She had plenty of questions (less irritating to field when you’re not answering for a person with no context whatsoever) but seems to have mostly gotten it.

She’s been wanting ever since to see the next movie, and we got it this weekend. She’s having trouble getting what the Empire is, I think (“a group of people, sort of like a state or country, and the Emperor is like the king of these people”), and today she called the movie The Death Star Strikes Back at one point. I didn’t get to watch the movie with her today (decided to paint a room on the spur of the moment and had to finish the job), but she mostly stuck with it and I think wasn’t too afraid. She told me at one point today that she was a lot like Obi Wan because she was very brave and so probably wouldn’t be afraid of it. I told her that I thought she’d change her tune once the Emperor came out and started throwing lightning at people (thougy maybe that happens in the next movie?). She came to join me in the room I was painting once when Darth Vader and Luke were fighting. She wasn’t too keen on watching that. I think it had less to do with the actual physical violence than with Luke’s dilemma, since she told me that what bugged her was that Darth Vader was trying to make Luke be naughty. My daughter the moral philosopher!

Free Seeds

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Do you like free stuff? How about free food? Well, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but you can come pretty close if you’re willing to put in a little work. I was recently turned on to wintersown.org, a site that promotes seed saving (Google Monsanto and GMO if you want to freak out about your food). They have a couple of programs for giving away seeds. All you have to do is send in a SASE per seed sharing program. I opted for both the “whatever” (they pick) giveaway and the tomato seed giveaway. So for $2.52 in postage, I got not just the 12 promised packets of seeds but in fact got a few extras. Here’s what I wound up with:

  • The Whatever Packets
    • Black-Eyed Susan
    • Golden Zucchini
    • Cleome “Violet Queen”
    • Maximillian Sunflower
    • Big Dave’s Red Tomato Blend
    • Kitchen Herb – Parsley
    • Helen’s Flower (Blend)
    • Perennial Lupine
    • Zinnia Mix
    • Mixed Morning Glory
  • The Tomato Packets
    • Tigerella Tomato
    • Blondkopfchen
    • Clear Pink Early (excited about these)
    • Early Ssubakus Aliana
    • Goji Faranji
    • Fuzzy Peach Tomato
    • Brandywine (an heirloom variety; excited to try these too)
    • Italian Market Wonder
    • Crimson Sweet Watermelon (huh?)
    • Kitchen Herbs – Parsley (kind of makes sense as a companion herb?)

Talk about over-delivering!

So now I need to get started winter-sowing. I’ve done a teensy bit of seed germination indoors so far. We have potatoes growing in small trash cans in our bathroom, and I’ve been growing a single sweet potato for a while now (they have the most beautiful delicate leaves when they’re small). I also have egg cartons growing peas and carrots. And I have some garlic coming up in the actual garden. The bulbs I planted earlier have leaves, and I checked on the bulbs I planted more recently this afternoon and found that the roots they were deploying had actually pushed the bulbs up out of the dirt a little. I guess the freeze we’ve had this week has made the ground hard enough that the roots had trouble digging down.

I’m really eager to get started with the tomatoes in particular, and I imagine Lennie and Mleeka will have a good time sowing flowers.

The tomato packets also came with a printout of instructions for saving tomato seeds. It’s a fairly involved process, but now that I’ll have a bunch of tomatos (with any luck), I’ll definitely try to save my own and maybe even contribute some back to wintersown.org.