Been a while since I posted a proper journal entry, and with summer in full swing and my entertainment quota currently being met, I feel it's time I dished out another one.
As I mentioned, the 2023 summer season is now in full swing as we creep into the middle of July. The season has given us a nice string of thunderstorms this past month, filling the humid nights with distant rumbles of thunder and illuminating the horizon with flashes of lightning. The heavy rainfall that has accompanied the storm systems has kept the town out of the red as far as drought conditions go while giving the farmers and small-time gardeners (such as myself) a break from the watering routine.
Speaking of gardening: My little plot of land has already produced a few cucumbers which I set to pickling right away, with at least thirteen more still growing on the various vines that I currently have trekking up a trellis made of wire fencing.
The beans have all finally made their way to "Bean Tower" and are currently setting out leaves and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, flowers and then the beans themselves. I cannot wait to make some dilly pickled beans for light snacking. If the tower puts out produce like it did several years back, I'll make plenty of pickled snacks this year.
The corn bed is growing extremely well, with each stalk standing anywhere from eight to twelve inches tall. The storm last night pushed a few of them over at an angle, but nothing they can't easily be righted.
My tomato plant, which I single-stemmed, seems to have stalled out in both fruit production and growth, as have the Lunch Box pepper plant after giving three moderate-sized peppers; It has yet to grow or put out any more blooms. I've ordered some Trifecta+ from MIGardener to feed the plants and hopefully get some production going before the end of the growing season.
The pumpkin vine is doing its own thing, having grown out far enough to leave the confined garden zone and then looped back around inside. No female flower has appeared yet, but going by what I've grown in the past, one should be popping up any day now, and once that gets pollinated, I'll snip the end of the vine to cease any further growth and make the plant divert energy to growing the pumpkin instead.
Also, just for the heck of it, my father had planted some cantaloupe seeds from a fresh melon he had bought a few weeks back. We didn't really expect much from it, but to my surprise, every single one of them sprouted. I cut them all back to just a single sprout. It's much too late in the growing season for our zone for anything to come of it, but I'm gonna let it go and see what happens anyway.
On the entertainment side of things, I'll kick it off with books:
I read book 1 of Bane County this past week. I hated it, and I hate having to say that. The lore behind the "werewolf", the town itself, and the amount of gore was absolutely fantastic. The beast racked up an impressive kill count by the end of it all, but I hate-hate-HATED the main characters. If ever there was a more insufferable protag in a horror novel, I've not yet found them. It was enough to put me off ever reading another book from that author.
I picked up Red Rising book 1 by Pierce Brown and started reading that, but I'm finding his writing style to be too, I don't know the word, try-hard? That's probably not the best way to describe it, but I feel like if the book had a voice, it'd sound like a thirteen-year-old trying to sound mysterious and imposing. I found this was the second time that I've been led astray by Mike's Book Reviews; I got the Faithful and the Fallen series for Christmas based on how much he gushed about them and found that I was only able to finish the first book. Now after hearing all the praise that Pierce Brown received from the same Booktuber, I picked it up as well and so far I have not been impressed, so I put it down and picked up another horror book instead.
And that book is Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena! I've been wanting to read this FOREVER but obtaining a physical copy of the book was outside of my price range due to its OOP status. Thanks to my shifting to a digital format for books this past month, I've been able to obtain several books that I'd never have had a chance to own or otherwise even read had it not been for digital preservation and the format making OOP books easier to obtain.
As far as video games go, right now I am waste-deep in the remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. After how the Friends of Mineral Town remake and Pioneers of Olive Town turned out, I was really worried about the future of the Story of Seasons series going forward. But Marvelous has shown with the amazing remake of AWL that they are more than capable of producing solid, captivating games. I am really excited for the next game in the series if the quality of SOSAWL is any indication of what to expect going forward.
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