Western tiger swallowtail

You know, I've been writing notes to people and they do not write back. 

That makes me think a couple of things in a row ending with oh well. 

A longterm friend is a difficult case. His taste is refined and he already buys whatever he wants. I mentioned a moth as a joke and expecting no response. But he did. And he responded to the joke. Positively. So I bought the framed moth and had it sent to him.

Ugly moth that looks like two snakes. Largest of the moths. It lives a short and depressing moth-life. Atlas moth, if you like. People find it fascinating. These moths are bred for this moth collecting industry. Hobbyists do various things. Frame them, for example. Real scientific-like. 

The thing is, this moth is born as a large butterfly to mate and then die. It has up to two weeks to do this. It does not eat. Or drink. No mouth parts. Every movement that the moth makes, any physical activity, subtracts from its life. Therefore it sits still. They are born again as moths, the males with wide feathery antenna. They crawl out of their chrysalis stage cocoon with their broad antenna and sit right there and wait for a particular motivating molecule. Boink. They're off in the direction of the molecule. It is the only thing that can motivate them. Next molecule, next molecule, another molecule, their tiny antenna triangulate. They zero right in onto the emanating female.

Luckily the female is nearby. Although lauded for tremendously accurate triangulating éclat, these moths never need fly very far. It's not a big hunt for the female. She's right there. On the same bush. Males and females born on the same bush. The female crawls out perhaps a few feet at most to get to the edge of the bush. Or the tree, or whatever. Huge wingspan but they do not fly very far. Nor very long. Their existence in butterfly form is dismal. Severely handicapped.  Depressingly brief. One single goal. 

It's not that they are lazy, it's that they cannot do anything.

Therefore, they are not interesting. 

Except everyone who I've shown this to disagrees. Some just flip out. Like my brother and his wife. So I bought them one too. 

What the heck. 

Within this discussion the original difficult friend actually wrote back and included a photograph from Facebook of a butterfly that he thinks is beautiful. He expressed a wish that he could take such good photographs.

It looks to be a female of either western or eastern tiger swallowtail. An American species with three forms and many variations between forms, and other very similar species. 

Another species is mostly white instead of mostly yellow. 

Another species has different markings on left and right bottom wings. 

For this species there are two forms of female, one that looks like the male except more colorful, and another form that is black. 

It's a bit of a confusing butterfly. 

The specimen shown me in the original photograph has the full panoply of dots and colors, a female then, either northern or eastern tiger swallowtail. 

The thing is, when this butterfly moves around its wings are held together so that the four bits of wing form a triangle. This species is known for being triangular. A triangular swallowtail. Every photograph that you see shows this. 

Every example of a real specimen is mounted improperly with their wings separated at the bottom as regular butterflies do so that no triangle forms. 

Oddly, this butterfly is mounted against its nature. 

All of them are mounted incorrectly this way. You can see this easily by searching Etsy. Both framed specimens and photographs of living specimens are shown together in array. Page after page of results. All the photographs of living species show a triangular shape for both wings pinched together at bottom. All of the mounted real specimens show the wings separated. 

Do I look like a lepidopterist over here? Am I an expert insect mounting hobbyist? I don't know anything about butterflies, only what I've looked up for these conversations, and I see that all the real specimens everywhere throughout the entire industry are mounted improperly and all the hobbyists doing this thing do not know the basic facts of this butterfly. And I do. 

La la la. 

A dummkopf like me with no butterfly knowledge drops in and notices more than all of the butterfly hobbyists doing this butterfly mounting through their lifetime. 

It makes buying a gift a bit difficult. The example he showed was a rather poor photo, all of the photos on Etsy are better but not all of them have the best characteristics of all of the available forms and variations for this species. Then frame is a separate purchase. And matting separate from that. 

In this case, photographs of living specimens are better than framed real specimens. Even with the additional problem of matting and framing a photograph yourself. After all that, not particularly less expensive. 

I wrote a specific butterfly vendor, one I had used and talked to before -- who else could I share this insight? -- Over there in Britainialand, and he hasn't written back. Go figure. 

Tea

Gift tea. Variety package. A variety of teas packaged attractively intended as gift. Ultimate Tea Sampler by Solstice Tea Traders. I think this arrangement looks attractive, and that is why I bought them, but in real life they are not arranged 3x4 in the box, they do not show all at once like this, rather, the tins are sealed and arranged stacked two layers 2x3. 

Plus the tins are round. Good tins that can be reused for spices or whatever. I asked, they told me.

See, it is colorful. Bright and happy-looking. Plus twelve things. This is perfect for a woman. 

Turns out that was true in both cases. Both women flipped out. Very fun to see. Here, have a look. It's fun.

The dog is playing with a bubble machine that I sent to the youngest boy a few days previously. I included a bottle of bacon-flavored bubble liquid. The dog is snapping at bacon-flavored bubbles. That is what is keeping the dog's interest.

Rudeness

My rudeness. I am not bragging. I am ashamed. Apparently isolation has caused me to become short with annoying strangers and this runs counter to my Christian upbringing. 

I know, right? Who would believe that. This is our Christian ego; we try to be like Jesus but we just cannot. 

Here's the thing. I don't believe in this whole shutdown, and I can tell you why. It's very childish but it works for me. My ten-year-old self and my sixty-seven year-old self are in agreement on this and so are all my selves in between. That is a multitude of selves in agreement. So I don't care what anyone else thinks. All you bore the living piss out of me. My own internal views are my only guide. And all of the experts that you can pull out of your butt and posit to the contrary can all just suck my big fat old white ... dangling participle.

See how rude I've become? 

I am ten. My family moved to Tokyo. Now it turned winter. Everyone is wearing a medical face mask. 

Everyone is wearing a face mask!

This is 1964. And everyone around me is wearing a face mask. 

There are millions of them. This is Tokyo. They are all the same. Same size. Same shape. Same black hair. Same faces. Same face masks. 

Not really, but come on, I am ten, alright? That is how I saw things. This society is largely homogenous. Back then people did not dye their hair pink and green and blue. 

It's the weirdest goddamn thing. 

But it seems like a pretty good idea, don't you think?

These people really are thinking ahead. Whether or not it actually works, they are all sincere in protecting each other. It's actually kind of sweet. 

Why don't we do that? 

Time goes by and I keep on wondering that. We move to United States. 

Decades go by and I keep wondering why Americans do not do the mask thing like the Japanese people all did way back then in the 60's. 

Decade after decade. I kept wondering this. 

Every flu season I wondered this. Should I wear a mask? That is not a cultural thing with us. I would stick out like a gangster. I would look like a bank robber. That is my culture. 

Flu comes every year. I think the same think year after year. 

It seemed a very good idea, yet here we are as Americans simply rejecting it automatically. We are freedom people apparently, not fascist all do the same thing automatically people. This is a BIG difference between us and Japanese. This is a thing that I know about ourselves. This I know about our two separate cultures. I will not see Americans wearing a face mask. Apparently, face masks are unAmerican. I do see the masks but it's all in hospital environments, not ever in America at large. 

Not ever. 

And that is very weird. 

And then I became ill such that flying endangered my wellbeing due to being crowded inside a metal tube for a few hours with other humans and all their weird comorbidities walking around, back and forth past me, just sitting there breathing. Breathing on me. Me breathing their air. Hour after hour. Something of theirs will jump on me. Me breathing all their air. Filtered, yeah, recirculated, repeatedly, even so, whatever, I don't know. I want a mask. 

Everyone of my friends flies around like a maniac and comes home ill. That could kill me. 

I thought about wearing a mask just to fly.

Would that be weird or what? 

Repeatedly, I visualized myself wearing a medical mask on an airplane just to fly. Because of all you sick-ass humans can easily kill me. 

Everyone else is normal, this is America after all, not Tokyo, and I would be the only one wearing a medical mask. Can I pull that off? 

Yes. I can. But I don't want to.

I really don't want to be the only guy on the airplane wearing a medical mask. Because all you buttholes can make me sick. 

And besides, that wouldn't work. 

The mask would protect them from me but not me from them. 

It's one of those backwards things. 

Everyone else would have to wear a mask and I could go la la la free. 

So that's not going to work. 

And that means I don't fly. 

For decades. 

And then 2020 happened. 

America adapted instantly. 

Simply astounding. 

The entire nation all at once. Finally. What took you so goddamn long? Honestly. What took you so long? 

I know exactly what took so long. 

Until this moment the entire world could go full on face mask but America would not. America flatly would not. That much I know from 60 years of experience wondering about America and face masks. It is far too intrusive. Far far far too invasive. Americans, due to their conceits about freedom and about individuality and about their uniqueness unto the world as exemplars of independence would never ever not never not ever forever never would accept medical face masks. 

I was gobsmacked how readily my Democrat city accepted responsibility for wearing face masks as if they actually believe all this horse shit. They truly believe. Bless their sparkling hearts they truly believe. They are responsible people. Of course they will do whatever the authorities suggest. It only makes sense.

Americans are simply the most cooperative sensible people. 

Who knew?

Overnight. American sense of independence and individualism and freedom changed in an instant. Pop. Just like that.  

That is what I saw. 

From age ten to age sixty-seven. 

What were the conditions that came together this year to make that happen? 

How is it that everyone went along with it so readily? It's not just "we suggest you wear a face mask," rather, Americans go a bit crazy about this. Europeans even more so. How is it, though, all these lovely people around me become so adamant so instantly about enforcing their brand new extralegal social agreements, that nobody voted for, with pain of enforcement to the tune of thousands of dollars in fines? 

Scratch a liberal and an illiberal bleeds. Do you see conservative governors doing this?

Fuck me. You should see the monthly newsletter for my apartment building. It's always a boring pos with clip art but this last one is particularly bad. They won't even look back at it as a mistake. It begins a lonely diatribe on how difficult it is working in isolation so everyone leave them alone right now. Communicate these special ways. Contact us only this one specific way and it ends with all the things residents do that make their lives miserable, so here are all the fines for not obeying house rules. Including now wearing a mask on the premises. 

What a load. 

Isolation suited these people perfectly. They wanted it. They like it so much they extended it repeatedly. They are reveling in it. The love it. Masks are like a miracle cure, a magic wand that makes everyone just stfu and stfd. And it works!

I've never seen anything like it. 

A true world wonder. 

I must now pray. 

Lord, look at me. See this? Is this a true marvel, or what? Help a brother out, is this a miracle because it seems like one to me. These people are blowing my mind how they all ... boink ... think the same thing all at once. 

Americans, you are blowing my mind. How does this go? I saw it one of the definitions. One thing after another, pile after pile after pile after pile after pile pure unadulterated resistance and finally SHUT THE FUCK UP, CEASE ALL ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, WHILE WE BURN AND WE SCREAM!

We assume these people are all Democrat voters but I seriously doubt that the rioters actually vote. 

In America, I suppose elsewhere as well, the medical masks wearing is part of everything else. All America suddenly agreeing to wear medical masks is not understood as a thing by itself. That could not happen by itself. It never did happen by itself even though with very good opportunity year after year after year with flu. But it didn't. Compulsion for medical mask wearing needed something big. For America, something bigger than big, something BIGGER THAN ANYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENED BEFORE IN HISTORY. Not a virus strain. Something much bigger than that. Something like your collective present day political ego and your realization that your long march through institutions is taking a little bit of a bend. Something like your one party for ALL American crackpots being insufficient to express your particular obsession. Something that your power-hungry egos simply cannot tolerate. A hard civic lesson like Trump delivered to Republicans to digest, that is flatly rejected by Republicans and by Democrats. The political pendulum swings and this swing is intended to slice off both your political heads and that is why we are all wearing medical masks. This is the power that power mad people have over you when their political power is thwarted. It is a coordinated and uncoordinated effort between thousands to stop living and to shut up until the all important overarching election that determines their life or their death. 

Medical mask wearing is the stfu price that I am willing to pay because their actual political power is worse. 

You insisting that I wear a mask, for all your various reasons, is you insisting that I shut up. 

Me wearing a mask is me saying, "Fine. I'll shut up. Just to live in the same city with you f'k'n crackpots. Prefer it that way, actually. I see your political power frustrated. And that is how I prefer you." 

The man has a funny name.

I should say, I've had more fun with people around here. We are all basically thinking the same things. I've had none of the bad Karen type experiences that I read about and everyone that I encounter seems to be on the same page as myself. I goof with the mask and nobody gives me any problem with it. I lift it and talk above it and wear it the wrong way and leave it hanging. I am mess with the mask and so far nobody has troubled me about it. My experience with the people in my city is all very lovely.

Outgoing mail

I pass two women who had finished the farmers market and were sitting on a squat parapet the base for iron fence in the shade and looking onto a lovely blank patch of perfect green lawn. I passed through the iron gate closed behind me. I speak to the two young women through the fence.  

"This mailbox says, 'outgoing.'" 

     "And ... " 

"This other mailbox says, 'introspective.'"

     "What does that mean?"

"Shy." 

     "I don't get it."

"One mailbox says outgoing and the other one says shy." 

     "I still don't understand."

"Outgoing mail ... and ... shy mail." 

     "Still don't get it."

"That was a joke." 

     "Oh."

The two women still didn't get it. And I forgot what it was like being that young. 

No I didn't. My young self is still alive and kicking. I was never that thick. I would have been just as flabbergasted back then at age nine.

New words. New vocabulary encountered reading online

Try your hand. Give it a go. 

I do very well with all the word things. My family likes to play games while I do not. Nevertheless to be with them I play these games such as scrabble. One evening we were playing with the wife of my younger brother's best friend. She kept questioning my entries. She kept looking them up. I entered EDILE, she looked it up. I told her what it means. She asked me how I know such a word. I told her how I know it. My mother said, "We learned to just trust him." 

I think that is so sweet.

They went through that. They looked up every weird thing that I entered too. But that's the thing; I don't know what is weird and what is ordinary anymore. 

Another time my family from the east coast was visiting. They were all at my parent's house assembled to do something. Dad was doing a crossword at the breakfast table and he kept asking me questions of the filler sort. I said, "Come on, Dad, ask us some hard ones." 

The two adjoining rooms were filled with people, all at once they each said, "N-o-o-o-o-o." 

I did not know they were listening. I thought they were each doing their own thing. But they were listening and they wanted easy questions, not hard ones. ALL my relatives wanted easy questions. I didn't even know they were trying. I thought that whole thing was between Dad and me. What a bunch of intruders.

Still, everyday, there are quite a lot of words encountered that I do not know. I'm telling you, sometimes I think people pull words out of their butt. Especially all those fer'ner words. 

These are the new ones since the last time I did this elsewhere. It's getting to be a big pile, and this pile gets added to the previous pile that's been going on like this for years, decades actually, through three laptop computers. 

Here goes:

* abseil: To rappel. (Mountaineering) a descent of a vertical cliff or wall made by using a doubled rope that is fixed to a higher point and wrapped around the body. Lower oneself with a rope coiled around the body from a mountainside.

It's a dream gig for anyone with a distaste for staid office jobs, as well as an excellent grasp of plantsmanship and the ability to abseil the battlements of a castle.

* affiant: someone who makes a sworn statement. US term for the person who makes a voluntary declaration of facts in a written statement and signs it under oath. The equivalent UK term is deponent. See also affidavit. 

“I was not the affiant,” Rosenstein protested to a questioner in a congressional committee.

* aggress: To make an attack; commit the first act of hostility or offense; begin a quarrel or controversy; hence, to act on the offensive. To encroach; to intrude; be or become intrusive.

The Sage of Scranton: "Is It Too Late to Aggress Climate Change?"

* allopathic: Allopathic medicine, or allopathy, refers to science-based, modern medicine, such as the use of medications or surgery to treat or suppress symptoms or the ill effect of disease. 

Allopathic Vs Osteopathic 

Osteopaths treat conditions with medical treatments as well as manipulation and massage of muscles, bones, and joints. In the United States osteopathic doctors are licensed physicians and surgeons. 

Ostopathic doctors must pass the same national board exams that all physicians do. They have the same residency training programs as other doctors. Osteopathic doctors have the title DO instead of MD 

She is best known for her integrative approach using complementary, functional and allopathic medicine, creating a unique treatment plan for each individual patient.

* autarky: A policy of national self-sufficiency and non-reliance on imports or economic aid. A self-sufficient region or country. Economic independence as a national policy.

In American terms, Trump’s supposedly quixotic effort to decouple key industries from China will no longer be the stuff of bemused scorn, but the new orthodoxy, with obvious advantages for the United States in terms of autonomy and autarky of life-sustaining goods—not to mention U.S. jobs.

That' it for the A's. 

Aquarium babies

Neon tetras are not particularly difficult to breed so long as a few basic requirements are met regarding softness of water and its associated pH. Soft, soft, soft, filtered, filtered, filtered, reverse osmosis, whatever.

I have a 10-stage tower type water filter in the kitchen used for the aquarium and for the garden and the neon tetras frolic and play. 

The thing is, this happened before in an aquarium with r/o water and the bright blue line on the body of the tiny little baby in the grass stuck out like a ... like a ... neon light. Poor thing. Gave itself away trying to hide.

While these babies do not shine like that. 

Their distressing lack of shine has me disbelieving these are actual neon tetras. 

I had to turn up the camera's ISO in order to get pictures. This particular camera requires higher ISO and this particular lens requires higher ISO, so double whammy there, plus it is very dim and the aquarium light should do it, but it doesn't, so very high ISO it is. 

This is what happens with high ISO. It's like film with high speed grain. The sensitivity is turned up so each tiny sensor gets information from its neighbors. Information leakage all over the place. This is 1:1, right here to show how indistinct the image due to this sharing. This is what high ISO does to an image. See? Photography education right here.

Okay, so how can you even form a sharp picture of a fish with all those scrambled dots all over the place? 

This tank is extremely active, the groups settle down to sleep while individuals remain active. It is the most active community that I've ever had. And I've had some great communities. But this one is like NYC. It's driving me a bit nuts watching them. Especially the Boesemani rainbows are particularly sexually active. In groups. The two large ones are gay. The smaller younger ones are working it out. They intermingle. The old gays come out of character and intermingle with the young straights and then return to their flirting and posing and mating rituals. 

The tank is trying to be like sunken ancient Alexandria Egypt. But it is too overrun with statues and with plants and with fish. Both statues and plants must be thinned. It has too many Chia Pet rams pretending to be Egyptian ram sphinxes. They are too close together. With everything else piled up in between and now with plants obscuring everything, it's more like a dumped pile of Egyptian ceramic artifacts. Those orange things are Chia Pet rams and the dark thing leaning against one of the Chias is the back of Horus falcon. Nothing can be seen because everything is obscured by plants that cannot be seen for being covered with algae. That gets rubbed off but grows back. More slowly each time. Like the tank is balancing over time. It started out everything brand new to prevent snail infestation, including plants from tissue samples, and this is the price that I am paying for that.

Along the way babies are born. Neons. The touchy precious little things. 

I am very very glad that my neon tetras are breeding in my community tank. While the other fish are sexing it up even more than they are but so far to no production. 

Pumped Up Kicks

This kid is so cool I can't stand it. It's the way he uses his finger-gun. This is facile use of a common sign extending its usual function to fit this song. I really enjoyed watching his interpretation. Very serious. Focused. Tight. On point. On time. On the beat. Then his older brother barges in and totally messes him up, reveals the situation of zero privacy in family situation, then boyish playing and goofs and bloopers that blow the whole original seriousness but not its original coolness.

And I am taken back in time to my own family and my own brothers and sisters totally messing me up while also providing my entire nurturing environment that allowed me to pursue outside interests to my heart's contentment. Thank you, family, for all that you gave me.

About that gun.

All the other kids with their pumped up kicks, you better run, better run, outrun my gun.

All the other kids with their pumped up kicks, you better run, better run faster than my bullet.

Pumped up kicks is improved sneakers. They had best run faster than a bullet. 

We must see all the other kids with improved sneakers. And we must see "better run," in a race, faster than his gun. Then repeat, the second time faster than a bullet. I need to see "better" and I need to see a race between the improved sneakers people first between a gun and then between a bullet. But I do not see all those things. All of it. Not just the main part of it. This refrain is repeated. 

We see "gun" and we see something move past the gun and that's it. Very abbreviated. 

Do you see a "rolled cigarette" or just a regular cigarette?

The sign used here for "kid" means to joke or tease. The sign for kid like a child is one of those unusual signs that moves outside the customary space, the hand moves to the side of the body and indicates the top of the head of an invisible little kid standing there. You can indicate the supposed age by the height or the level of your hand.  So, he says, "cowboy-jest" not "cowboy-boy." But he did say "kid" in sign. See how that works? It messes you up. His sign for "kid" fits the concept-cloud for joke, tease, jest in that language, but he is using it from his English concept-cloud that includes child, boy, girl, lad, lass, tot. It's a clash of the concept-clouds involving the word "kid." The interpreter will have to do "cowboy hat - child," and stand there momentarily embodying that persona and the two concepts ring through -- the Cowboy Kid.

For Korean pop dance level of excellence the interpreter will have to show everything in the lyrics, show the phrase the moment it is spoken, have key words hit on point, but this student does not. However, he does indicate what the song is about and he keeps up phrase for phrase, and does very well graphically. I like the coolness of this boy quite a lot.

Tents in the city

Denver Colorado. Democrat governor, Jared Polis, Democrat mayor, Michael Hancock.

The middle of July a friend and I took Lyft to the Woods restaurant in RiNo, a tasteful outdoor thing going on at the edge of town looking back onto the town and outwardly to the mountains. It's neato-mosquito and all the super cool kids go. You get out of their goofy elevators and walk a l-o-n-g hallway lined with kegs stacked on thick heavy keg-holders. You get the impression that they serve an awful lot of various beer. 

     "I bet you ten dollars they're empty."

Tap tap tap. Hollow. 

On the way back we took stock of damage of protests, not that bad really, but right before we get to my apartment we must pass by Civic Park and the other park on the other side of Broadway and Lincoln to the capitol all completely covered with tents. 

This is a first for us lifelong Denver residents. 

Think about your tent. Using it in the city. They are doing this.

We discussed this so far as possible in a cab two blocks from my home. Too bad. So sad. So much to think. So much to say. So much to analyze. So much to prioritize. So very much to sort.

Then within the next two days they were gone. 

Entirely.

From the capitol parks. 

It's a really cool area. Very well taken care of. Site of very many civic activities through the summer, all seasons actually, all held up now because of Covid-19 and because of political upheaval, and these tents. 

Within the next two days all the tents had been cleared out.

Just like that.

Within the next few days the tent-people moved two blocks south and set up on the thin strip of grass that line the sidewalks to the Denver Art Museum. I suppose they did this in other directions as well.

This thin strip of grass is the spot in the area where dog owners throughout walk their pets. To poop. I can guarantee that every single square inch of grass was at one time topped with dog poo. Now the tents are covering all the dog poop spots. 

See, the Covid thing is a health hazard. Presumably. The Tent-people are creating another health hazard on top of that. Definitely. On top of the dogs, and adding their own.

And Denver takes care of its indigent and its homeless. We are extremely liberal people. We take care of one another with impressive kindness and understanding. We talk about this kind of crap all the time. All the time. Constantly. Food drives. Clothing drives. Coat drives. Canned goods drive. Stupid shit you have in your pantry drives, Mistakes you made that you'd like to inflict on others drive. Ski equipment drives, hang glider drives, mountain climbing equipment drives. We are insanely good-hearted people. Interested in your wellbeing.

Disturbed, Sound of Silence

A metal band picked up Sound of Silence to cover as they do energizing old songs with new arrangement and instruments but this one was different. At first I'm stuck, oh crap, he's going too slowly, this whole thing is going to be a total drag. David Draiman increases the power of his voice incrementally as he goes section to section without giving up its full richness. He inverts familiar phrases. Three times, I think, phrases that are meant to rise instead descend for additional metal profundity. Draiman yells without abandoning his original richness. That is, he takes us listening to the limit he knows of the richness-intensity of his voice. He goes very high and powerful. We know he can go even higher but not with the same depth and richness that he starts out low and slow two whole octaves ago. The power of his voice and his control blows my mind.

And it's not just my mind. It's everyone's mind.

This band has opened this very old song to a whole new generation who love it in its new form.

What does David Draiman say of this? How did this even happen?

Baby beans

They're like the June Taylor dancers or Olympic synchronized swimming emerging from the soil sequentially.

A bit late. But who cares?

The line of beans continues to the left in another pot.

And so on to another pot. A trench is formed in each pot with seeds in the trenches and with bulbs or whatever planted in front of them. 

These trenches are over-planted terribly. Nobody sensible plants so many so close together. There are actually three species in each trench and the entire trench is sprinkled with seeds. There is none of this, 'two inches apart' crap. I need to curate them so much as possible up the balcony railing.

The left half of the balcony has Morning Glory seeds all the way across with very long Chinese brown beans. 

The right half of the balcony has pots with trenches filled with another type of beans and a another type of Morning Glory. 

Cucumbers sporadically both sides, mostly the middle.

Three types of seeds in each trench for things that climb. I forget what else I put in there. 

The Chinese long beans form a wall of foliage then they produce pods that grow an inch each day so that at the end of the season the fading wall of leaves is draped with extraordinarily long beans just hanging there pendently, oddly somewhat sexually. They received the most interesting responses from women, "May I touch one?" 

Small beans in long pods. I suppose you eat the whole pod. These beans were all grown last year. 

The other bean is a large white casserole type that is pickier about germination. A few did grow last year, but very late, and they were planted three times. They're from France. Haricot Tarbais. This year they have not germinated yet. I did not pre-soak the beans. But boy, are they ever being soaked now.