Sunday, January 31, 2010

Gardening in Second Life

Cabbage, broccoli, fava beans, beets, spinach are growing in the garden here at Altamira, and the daffodils are beginning to bloom. The winter grass is emerald green, and it's pleasant to go for a walk on a warm day; but really, there's nothing worthy of a photo at the moment, and it's not fun to be in the garden on days like today -- cloudy, temps in the 30's (Farenheit). I worked at excavating the pile someone made with a tractor -- good lumber, trash lumber, bricks, bags of garbage, weeds, soil all pushed into a huge pile. What could they have been thinking?? It's slow, dangerous work to dismantle the pile, moving the good lumber into the barn, burning the scrap lumber, stacking the metal to be recycles, and putting the non-recyclable plastic into the bin to be taken to the county landfill.

I come inside from time to time, to warm up and hang out in a land where it's always summer, if I want it to be -- Second Life. I do not tend to socialize in Second Life, although I have met some interesting people there and actually ended up doing business in Real Life with some of them. My favorite thing to do in SL is design things -- buildings, landscapes, furniture. I had a furniture store there for a while, and an office building that I rented out. But I got too busy in RL and did not have time to manage my SL holdings. So I sold out and now rent a small tract of land on a quiet island, to use as my own personal retreat.

I have used SL to design furniture I want to have custom made in RL, and shipping container houses (I had wonderful plans for a 4-container house at Altamira, but I have now scaled that back to 2 containers), and of course gardens. Here's a pic of me hanging out in SL this afternoon, in front of the garden house. What a contrast to RL!

Friday, January 8, 2010

More Ice in the Garden


The water coating these oregano leaves formed round balls.

Ice in the Garden

This is Carolina Jessamine in my San Antonio garden. I left the garden faucet valve slightly open last night to keep the above-ground pipe from freezing and breaking. This particular valve is a gate valve that sprays instead of drips when it is just open a little. The droplets coated the branches and leaves of the plants and froze in layers. Very pretty -- like a china garden.