Window Garden

Today was my first day at WNC Magazine, where I'll be a photography intern for the summer. It's a cute little office over a smokeshop (helloooo Asheville). My photography studio? An upstairs hallway with a wonderful skylight and excellent natural lighting. A little ghetto, but it works. Basically today I was there for about an hour, learned all about improvising when it comes to lighting (there's very little there to work with), how to backlight wine bottles so they don't show highlights, and the best way to drape a scarf to make it look more interesting than just a heap on the floor. The first few weeks are going to be all about product photography. Not the most interesting or glamorous of subjects but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

Since they sent me home after just an hour, as my editor is heading out on vacation today, I ended up with a mostly free day, and nothing really to do.

One of the things I'm looking forward to most when I get my own place is having a garden. Watching the seeds that I put in the ground with my own hands grow into something beautiful and usable, and not to mention eating the delicious fruits (and veggies) of my labor. Since the house I'm in this summer doesnt have much back yard to speak of, not to mention restrictions on what I can plant, I had to improvise.

Enter the $1 spot at Target.

I've tried a few times before to grow these little seed kits with very disappointing results. Mostly I think because I forgot to water my little baby Christmas tree or miniature field of wildflowers, but I would much rather blame shoddy production.

I planted parsley, basil, and cilantro, because, well, that's what they had. Here's some cilantro seeds, they look kind of like tiny walnuts. They told me only to plant 5 seeds of each kind, which wasn't hard with those, but have you ever seen parsley seeds? They're each about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Needless to say, I planted about 300 of those. Oh well.

For some reason, despite my inability to follow directions, I have irrational hope for my little window garden. I might even go raid the $1 spot for more tiny little pots of dysfunctional seeds.

Beginning once again

Yeah so I really failed at keeping up with this. So, almost exactly one year later, I'm going to try again. I'm not entirely certain what this summer will hold just yet, or if interning at Western North Carolina Magazine in Asheville and scooping ice cream at the Marble Slab Creamery will even provide enough fodder for a blog, but for what it's worth I'm gonna give it a shot.

My first impression, after spending a day in my new life, is that this summer is going to consist of a lot of working, driving on the parkway, reading cooking blogs and pretending I can cook, and generally attempting to navigate around my new surroundings. But hey, if I can survive a week at the Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, I can survive a summer here.

Today I discovered two things: Bacon Roses and the goat cheese grits at Tupelo Honey Cafe.

(I also just discovered how to embed links in a post. Look at me being an adult. Ok no more I promise.)

Yes. Both of those are about food, and there is very little substantial information in this post. Welcome to my summer.