More kicks for free

It's been a very busy weekend for us. Luckily, it wasn't work or other obligations tying up our time, just a bunch of different for-fun activities that all happened to fall on the same couple of days. And, more luckily still, they were all free.

We started off the weekend with the International Games Day event at the Piscataway library, just a few miles up the road. Brian was quite familiar with this library, since it's within easy walking distance from  his office; he has often spent his lunch break strolling there, checking out the graphic novels, and walking back to work. He's also occasionally stopped by on his bike on the way to or from work. But he'd never driven there before, and the trip was complicated by the fact that there was a Rutgers football game scheduled for the same afternoon. Since this invariably snarls up traffic everywhere near the stadium for hours before and after the game, he planned an alternate route that skirted around the edges of campus rather than taking us right past the stadium. Even from this path, a mile or more from the stadium, all the campus parking lots we could see were packed with tailgaters, but luckily they hadn't discovered (or at least hadn't filled up) the library lot.

At the library, there was one large room devoted entirely to board games from around the world, each with one person in charge of teaching the game to newbies. The selections included kiddie games like Chutes and Ladders (India) and Candy Land (USA); board-game classics like Hanabi (France) and Wingspan (USA); and role-playing games like For the Queen (Canada) and Blood on the Clocktower (Australia). There were also separate areas devoted to traditional games, including chess (India), checkers (Iraq), and skittles (Ireland). We spent some time chatting with a pal from a local board-gaming group, who was there to teach Hanabi, and with the designers of a game called Shaolin, which is based entirely on the works of Wu-Tang Clan. Passing on this since we both know next to nothing about the group, Brian elected to play Wingspan instead, while I joined a game of For the Queen led by another board-gaming buddy of ours. I also tried Carom, an Indian game a bit like pool played with flat discs, and skittles, a pub game in which you try to knock down little bowling pins with a spinning wooden top. I never felt like I had much control over it, but when I showed it to Brian after he'd finished his Wingspan game, he recalled having played it years before, most likely at his grandparents' house. Apparently he hadn't lost his touch with it, since he gave it two attempts and scored over 600 both times.

In between games, I checked out the library's maker space, which features a variety of tools such as a 3D printer, thermal transfer machines, and sewing machines. The host there told me they sometimes have scheduled events, but you can also email them to schedule a one-on-one appointment for your own pet project. She offered me a choice of freebies from previous crafting events; I settled on a button reading, "So many books, so little time." I also spent a bit of time browsing the library's mini bookstore, which included a small selection of both kid and adult books for a dollar or less. Luckily, I didn't find any new books to add to our towering to-read piles, but I selected one item to add to our holiday gift exchange and a nice assortment of greeting cards to be deployed on future birthdays, all for just $1.20.

All that occupied a good chunk of the afternoon, so we headed home for an early dinner (taking an even more circuitous route on the way back to avoid the football crowds) before heading back out to check out R.O.T.-Tober Fest, a Halloween event being put on by the RAC-on-tour bookmobile. The owner of the RAC-on-Tour, Alex Dawson, is an English professor at Rutgers who believes in promoting weirdness of all kinds, and this event was no exception. We browsed the flea market and artists' booths, caught the end of a performance by "Bruce Frankensteen" (a local busker with multiple personas), watched a sideshow performer called The Reverend Thom Odd contort himself through a series of tennis rackets, and heard a reading of a spooky story by one of Dawson's students before heading home.

And that was just on Saturday. Today, after we had a late breakfast and Brian made a call to his parents, we headed out a third time to a native plant giveaway run by our local eco-group, Sustainable Highland Park. We've received free native plants from this organization before, including bee balm and hyssop, but this time we were looking specifically for something we could put in our new planters. We filled these in initially with a mixture of plants bought on clearance at the Belle Mead Co-Op: four salvias, two heucheras, two English ivies, and four begonias. Of these, we knew we'd need to replace at least the begonias in the spring, since they're annuals; as for the rest, we figured we'd see how they did and replace them if necessary.

The results were middling. The two salvias in the rear planter have absolutely thrived, but the two in the front planter—with identical soil and water levels—grew weak and spindly. Both heucheras are doing okay, but they look a bit dry and papery. The two ivy plants thrived initially, putting out long tendrils that hung over the backs of the planters, but just this past week something (presumably a deer) came along and ate a bunch of their leaves, making them look a bit lopsided. As for the begonias, they've all been repeatedly munched right down to the dirt line, and one of them has gone entirely missing.

After consulting with the folks from Sustainable Highland Park and debating the merits of the various native plants they had on offer, we settled on a narrowleaf mountainmint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium). Being part of the mint family, it's a tough little plant that's hard to kill, and its shallow root system makes it suitable for container growing. Brian dug up the stubs of the begonias from the front planter and put the new mountainmint in their place, where it will have a month or so to get settled in before winter arrives. As for the remains of the begonias, he brought them in and put them in pots. If any of them manage to put out new growth, we can give them away or add them to Brian's workplace plant collection. (They shouldn't stay around our house, since they're toxic to cats.)

So that was our busy weekend, sandwiched in the middle of two equally busy weeks. Between volunteer activities, game nights, musical events, and other appointments, we've had something going on almost every day last week, and we'll have the same next week. After that we'll be able to slow down to maybe one thing every other day, and by mid-November we might actually get a few days in a row to catch our breath before plunging headlong into the holiday season.