Gardening Experience

Plinky Prompt: Have you ever tried to grow your own fruits or vegetables?

Just for fun. In Zeralda when we were kids we lived in a villa that had an outside garden with a little bit of dirt and we used to spit our watermelon seeds there and grew watermelon unintentionally!. Before we knew it we had small watermelon the size of a cantaloupe.. Another time I grew potatoes on the side of my townhouse. I was composting actually.

Recently I thought of growing a hydroponic garden in our community. I actually entered The Aviva Community Fund contest in order to get funds to grow a hydroponic garden in our community.The problem with living in the city is not having enough space to grow a decent size garden. Hydroponics is an ideal way to grow your own food where it doesn't take up a lot of space. Heck you can do this in your own basement or on a balcony but unfortunately not many people know how to start one.

Gamemaker Grudge

Letter G Chapter 7: Gamemaker Grudge 

Katniss is awakened by disturbing dreams and takes a shower. She ends up pushing all the wrong buttons and jet streams of cold and hot water make her jump getting her blood pumping which isn't a bad thing but rather annoying when she has to scrape the soap off with a bristle brush.

It is nearly dawn so she gets ready and goes downstairs for breakfast. She finds nobody around except an Avox servant (someone without a voice) so she pigs out on all the food. While waiting for the rest of her team members to show up-Peeta, Haymitch etc.. she sits by the window watching the sunrise and daydreams about her mother and Prim and what they must be doing right now.

She starts worrying about the training in the next 3 days and how well she will perform for the Gamemakers.

Peeta speaks highly of Katniss and her hunting skills and they decide to train together as a team. When he thinks there is no way he can win with his lack of skills, Katniss reminds everyone that Peeta can lift hundred pound bags of flour. Lol poor Peeta, he is such a good sport. I get a chuckle when he says "Yes, I'm sure the arena will be full of bags of flour for me to chuck at people". Katniss defends Peeta by saying he can wrestle. That's good. Peeta still isn't convinced. I think maybe he's feeling a little bit sorry for himself and he gets upset when he tells us about how his mother thought District 12 might have a winner because Katniss was a survivor. I think it made him jealous.

The training room is a big gymnasium below ground level. The gamemakers sit above the room and observe to see how the tributes do while they judge them. At the end of the training sessions they each have a chance to show their special skills privately. The gamemakers then decide on a final score for each of them. I guess the higher the score the better chances of being sponsored.

Katniss shows off her Archery skills. She does pretty good but the gamemakers don't seem to be paying much attention to her and she takes offense to it. Uh Oh. She sees the pig which they seem to be more fixated on, and shoots her arrow straight into the apple of the roast pigs mouth~! Great shot ! She takes a bow saying "Thank you for your consideration" and steps out. Her performance scored her an 11 and here she thought the gamemakers hated her.

Friends On Fire

The Letter F Chapter 6: Friends On Fire

 "Presenting ourselves not as adversaries but as friends has distinguished us as much as the fiery costumes."

In their flashy costumes, Katniss and Peetas Fiery Debut was spectacular. They're told to hold hands and smile a lot in the chariot of fools  champions. Haymitch says it's the perfect touch of rebellion. They both agree to play starcrossed lovers for the camera although Peeta is serious about being in love with her, it infuriates Katniss because she doesn't love him :( Tributes are assigned their own quarters in the tower of the Training Center. Every district gets a floor to themselves, it was no small surprise that Katniss's room was larger than her entire house.

In the more modern future perhaps we will be able to change the view out of our windows. The shower in her bedroom had a lot of buttons you could press, and if you got hungry there was a button for that as well. She could dress to whatever she felt like wearing fit for her at her fingertips. They are lavished with rich food from Cinna's lunch to Katniss eating goose liver and puffy bread.

Even though I don't particularly like lamb or duck or squirrels, the Everdeen's were having Fish Stew for the Reaping. How it must seem like a fairytale even though she feels nothing but disdain for the Capitol!

For dinner they eat a flaming cake and some kind of mushroom soup with bitter greens and tomato size peas, rare roast beef sliced thin, noodles in green sauce, and cheese that melts on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes.

Engulfed in Flames

The Letter E Chapter 5: Engulfed in flames

In the Remake center one of Flavius, Venia's and Octavia's task is to strip and wax the hair off the body. Haymitch had warned both tributes that they aren't going to like what they do to the both of them but they should just grin and bear it. He was right of course because getting the hair ripped off your body isn't pleasant. I know after my eyebrows are waxed it feels kind of numb.

They also remove all the dirt by using some gritty foam that removes the slough and dead skin cells 3 layers deep. Katniss gets a manicure and pedicure. I think I would enjoy it apart from the pain.

It's funny that the Prep Team thinks this is the way a human should look like, but the irony is that compared to the stylists in the Capitol, they are the monsters for being dyed, stencilled, and surgically altered. It's gross. Cinna, Katniss' stylist, is an exception. He looks normal. Cinna thinks Katniss' hair braids her mother made, are classic. How else would they have appeared to him? How does the Capitol styles and fashion appear to Katniss? She thinks they're disgusting!

Time to eat. Cinna invites Katniss to lunch. He pushes a button and out comes some chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.  Expensive edibles like this would require days of hunting.

Cinna and Portia plan an unforgettable ensemble for Katniss and Peeta. Their focus is on coal except they use it to set them on fire, hence, the girl who was on fire.

Dandelions To Die For

The Letter D Chapter 4: Dandelions To Die For

Why does Katniss avoid Peeta? She doesn't want Peeta getting to her because he is so kind and selfless. He always thinks of others like when he offered to take a drunk Haymitch back to his room to clean the vomit off him, and when he gave Katniss the bread. She thinks the kinder the person, the more dangerous they are, so in an attempt to get rid of him she tosses the cookies his dad gave her out the train window, and they end up crashing in a bunch of dandelions.

What is the significance of the dandelion? It reminded Katniss that she wasn't doomed to die. In the schoolyard, after seeing Peeta's bruise on his face, she saw a dandelion, and she realized what she had to do to keep her family alive. She talks about hunting and learns to pick herbs and wild edible plants and flowers like the Katniss to eat. She begins hunting rabbit and catches fish.

If dandelions and the bread symbolized hope, the woods were her savior. She learned how to keep her family alive, but now she was going to the Capitol to die.

The events of the day were like an extended dream, where just this morning she was laughing with Gale, but it turned into a nightmare, and she wishes she could just fall asleep and wake up back in District 12.

In the morning she meets in the dining car with Peeta, Haymitch and Effie Trinket. Haymitch doesn't give them much advice other than "Stay Alive." This upsets Peeta and Katniss, and they lash out at him, only Peeta gets punched in the jaw. That's twice Peeta gets hurt for defending Katniss. I wonder why?

I don't believe for a minute that Peeta is thinking of killing Katniss. Why does she think like that? Does she want to piss him off just so it'd give her a reason to kill him or hate him? There is no need to kill him!!! That is the point I think. Peeta would die for her even if it meant being killed by her.

Coal To Capitol

The Letter C Chapter 3: From the Coal Mines to the Comforts of the Capitol 

This is not your basic rags to riches story.
Cinderella never fought in an arena, unlike Katniss, nor did she kill anyone. Gale is like "How hard can it be really?" I always knew him to be a very self-centered, narrow minded, selfish individual.

Here they travel on a train to the Capitol, located in a place once called the Rockies quite a distance from where Katniss lives, but with the trains high-speed it'd take less than a day. It is forbidden for any of Panem's citizens to travel except on official duty. The train is even fancier than the justice building where rooms come with hot showers and clothes to wear. She's never had a hot shower before because in the Seam they don't have hot running water, and she's never been on a train or to the Capitol before.

What turns me off about the Capitol is the Crazy Couture. I don't like their creepy fashions and colorful pageantry. Cinna wasn't bad but I think Effie Trinket is hideous so is the announcer with the blue hair, Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith, who was the voice of the announcer we heard in the arena. Cranes beard is cutting edge wouldn't you say?

Creatures of the Capitol

Caesar Flickerman - TV host and announcer

Cinna- Katniss' Stylist

Effie Trinket - Escort

Seneca Crane-Head Gamemaker

The Boy With The Bread

The Letter B Chapter 2: The Boy with the Bread 

background:

When she was eleven years old, her mother turned catatonic over losing her husband, that forced Katniss and Prim to fend for themselves and they almost starved to death. Katniss went to trade in some baby clothes in the marketplace they call the 'Hob' hoping she could get something to eat to bring home. All they'd had to eat for 3 days was hot water and mint leaves.

The boy in the bakery threw her the bread perhaps because he loved her 'from the first moment he laid eyes on her.' Whatever the case was, his mother told him to throw it to the pigs because no decent person would buy it and he got a black eye for it. Except to Katniss, it was her last hope. "You don't forget the face of the person who was your last hope." Reduced to steal from the garbage bin to keep her family from starving and fearing Peeta's sick mother would hit her with her broomstick, she sat down tired, exhausted and hungry underneath an apple tree and watched Peeta chuck the loaves that were meant for her.

"It didn’t occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn’t even know me. Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have inevitably resulted in a beating if discovered. I couldn’t explain his actions." pg.31 chapter 2