This morning the birds got up at 5 am to say what a beautiful day it is. My new favorite morning tea is oat flowers which is an old European energy staple. Got the purple asparagus and herbs planted this weekend which is a nice start to April. #1 neighbor tool request is Clyde’s Garden Planner for $5-8. It’s a small slide ruler of basic planting dates, companion crops, and yield for spring and fall annual crops in the US. Practically, a kitchen garden means planting 1-2 crops every week in a 15’ x 30’ plot which saves the average family $4,000-8,000/year in grocery bills, but given all our different temperature zones compared to Europe, it can be a bit more difficult to figure out what to plant when trying to line up frost dates with your region. Clyde’s very well-organized and has a sense of thrifty Jewish German-American can do spirit solves this pain point beautifully. The thing sells itself.
Speaking of things that sell themselves, a number of theater people over the past month have talked about changes in the entertainment industry towards bread and butter tourism. Shows. Weekend Experiences. Local food trucks. Walking tours. Tourist stops. Museums. There’s also a couple new music venues popping up, but it will probably be 2-3 more weeks before we see downtown musicians on public transportation hopping from one area to another so that’s really hard to measure as it picks up over the summer. Maybe we’ll finally get some classic fantasy movie scripts like Elvenbane (Halfblood Chronicles) by Mercedes Lackey that would be complicated and interesting. Or her Valdemar shapeshifting ghost horses and magic riders. The series seems custom made to show off classic dressage skills for Spanish Andalusian horses. Cynically, would probably rebrand them as Morgans for the US military so you could access our trained mounted patrol, but that’s probably a personal choice for budget. It would free up funding for more CGI special effects and AI Tolkien style? Anyways, getting off topic. What bread and butter tourism do you do? What would you add? Is a pivot towards fantasy happening near you? Do you think it will mean we'll get more historical fairytales?