Todd is downstairs watching a DVD of "How I Met Your Mother," and I am up here surfing around and actually feeling like writing, which I have not in several weeks.
I can't remember if I ever mentioned it before, but spring is hard for me, for some reason. I just do not like most things about spring, especially the capri pants. This is what I look like in capri pants:
The left image is me, the right image is my reflection in the mirror at the clothing store, and I am shouting that I do not like capri pants and wagging my finger to emphasize the point.
My brain slows down when spring arrives. I don't know if it's the pollen phlegm or what, but I always go into a mental coma. I feel like I'm coming out of it today, hence the ability to blog-write.
In spring, the neighbors and their kids and their dogs come out of winter hibernation at the exact same time when I start to feel the need to open windows and let in some fresh air. But opening windows also lets in the neighbors/kids/dogs noise, too. Winter is so nice and quiet!
On the bright side, my tulips and daffodils have nice green shoots poking up, which the bunnies are already sampling. My chives and parsley are looking very promising, too. One thing I do love about spring is the GREEN of it all.
I cooked a recipe from a book tonight. Not a cookbook, but one of those novels with recipes included, which I have found can be pretty hit-or-miss. The book was American Cookery by Laura Kalpakian, which I really enjoyed, and the recipe was a simple pork chop thing, which would have been better if I hadn't overcooked them. I do that a lot with chops and steaks, it's frustrating.
All you do is season the chops with salt, pepper and cumin, brown them and cook them with garlic and orange marmalade. I added a tiny slurry of red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and cornstarch, shaken up in the empty marmalade jar. It definitely had promise.
I bought some Skechers Shape-Ups on Sunday, since I needed new walking shoes anyway, and these are supposed to tone your legs and butt, improve your posture, increase your IQ and make you ten years younger. Lots of promises on that shoebox!
They came with an information booklet and a DVD to show you how to walk in them, which seemed like overkill to me. I think I must walk pretty well already because I haven't had any problems with them so far. They have a rounded sole that replicates the feel of walking on a soft surface like sand, which is supposedly more of a workout for your legs. I find them very comfortable so far, but I don't look any younger. Darn.That's it for now.
We had a great weekend with my brother's family, and especially getting to hang with Natalie and Marissa all day Saturday.
Books were read...
...water was spilled...
...and mopped up and spilled again...
...herbs were picked...
...and cheesy grins captured.
Everybody curled up and watched Robin Hood (the animated Disney version) on Sunday morning while it poured rain outside--very cozy.
I was really thrilled, on Saturday, to get to introduce the girls to my favorite childhood movie, The Sound of Music. Marissa wandered in and out for some of it, getting Todd to play hide-and-seek with her or read her a couple of books, but Natalie stuck it out till the end. It was hard to explain nuns and Nazis to a six-year-old (nuns = "women who want to love and worship God all the time so they live in a special place and wear special clothes"; Nazis = "bad guys who did some really bad things") and I fast-forwarded through a couple of the boring talky scenes with the Captain and the Baroness, but she loved it. I was glad. What a great memory, getting to watch it with her.Whenever the girls come to visit, the house always seems a little sad and quiet after they leave.
Love those two girlies.
I still had my cold all weekend, which is why we had a low-key Saturday watching a long movie and playing with water, and today I'm just really tired. Took a nap yesterday afternoon and slept hard all night long, and I'm still dragging a little today. Definitely on the mend, just...tired.Oh--I finally have my car back! We picked up Todd's car Thursday night. Today I went to the park and walked and got groceries, and it felt like such a luxury after three weeks of car-lessness. I'm glad life is back to normal and I can go wherever I want whenever I want!Hope everybody else's week is off to a good start, too.
I've been anxious to get some hanging pots up on the front porch, because it's that time of year, when the mourning doves come and nest in the pot of their choice, so when we found some lovely red petunias at the grocery store Saturday, we brought them home and hung them up.
Not a moment too soon, either--look who I found when I peeked out the front door just now:
Meanwhile, daddy bird is fluttering about with bits and pieces to help out...here he sits on the front steps checking me out to make sure I'm not going to interfere:
I can hear them out there right now, clucking and chattering to each other and scolding all the other birds who get in their way. We've had doves nesting on the porch every year--for all I know, it's the same parents every year--and it makes me so happy to see them getting their spot all ready again.
The only problem is that it makes it impossible to do any dead-heading, and virtually impossible to do any watering, so the plant usually dies. I'm going to try to at least keep it watered this time--but I have an extreme aversion to baby birds, so it's a very shuddery experience, because I'm so afraid of tipping out a creepy, slimy baby bird if I get too close. Maybe I'll make Todd do it.
We had an extremely productive weekend--got our taxes filed, got some financial stuff taken care of at the bank, bought a carload of plants, totally re-vamped the corner flower bed and built two low rock walls across it, filled the bed with plants...that's all I can remember, but I'm sure there was more.
This year I've decided to go for it with the gardens and landscaping--that is, fill up those beds with plants and hang the expense. (Within reason, of course.) I'm going to pull out every single one of my flowerpots and fill all those up, too. By July, I want this house to look like a freaking flower festival.
One good thing is that after three years, I have a good idea of what will grow well in our dry and sunny and hot conditions, so I can make more informed purchases. Another good thing is that I have a lot of established perennials, so I can concentrate on filling in the gaps with lots of colorful annuals.
When I get a minute, I'll try and find some "before"pics of the corner bed, so the new-and-improved version can be fully appreciated. But believe me, it's MUCH better!
My friend Cheryl gave me this little pitcher last week, and it's the perfect size and color to hold the tallest of my johnny-jump-ups, plus a couple straggler pansies and some lemon balm. Thanks again, Cheryl, I love it!
I went to my favorite nursery today and salivated over the herbs. I wasn't in the mood to buy and plant yet, just to look. I've been perusing my herb books and found a few that I'd like to grow, but I'm not sure how far afield I'm going to have to go to find them.
I love thymes, I have several different varieties growing out front, and they're starting to sneak through the rock wall very picturesquely, which is what I was hoping for. I found another variety today that I HAVE to get...it had the happiest green and yellow leaves and a fabulous lemon smell. But it wasn't lemon thyme...I can't remember the name. It was darling.
They also had a gorgeous purple basil and a Greek columnar basil; I think I'm going to get both of those. I planted a plain old basil last year, and it loved the hot, hot sun out front.
Also a bronze fennel that was SO pretty. I've never grown fennel before, and I think this one would make a wonderful contrast to all the green herbs and perennials.
I just wandered along, brushing and stroking and smelling...so much fun. The mints smelled like heaven, and I think I'm going to do some peppermint and something else to contrast with it in one of my flower boxes out back on the deck. They're built into the benches in the seating area, so you have to fill them with something or they're just boxes of dirt, which is hardly an accent. I tried to grow flowers in them last year, and the sun was just so iffy. I wonder if white impatiens and dark green peppermint would do well in the same box. It could look wonderful...theoretically, anyway.
The weather remains cloudy and unsettled-feeling, and my face remains swollen and tender. I'm usually not one to cry for the sun, but I'm missing it!
Is there anything as wonderful as green leaves and grass in the spring? We're having a rainy day today--the first in ages--and the backyard is so green, it makes me catch my breath every time I walk into the kitchen or dining room and see it through the windows.
I tried to capture some of it through the kitchen window, but it doesn't really convey the GREENness of it all. It's gorgeous.
Yesterday we finished getting the front flower bed weeded and put down some landscape liner in the parts where we won't be planting, at least not anything small. This week I'm hoping we can get some mulch for the whole thing, and then I'll be ready to plant.
Our front bed is huge--it runs across the front of the house and down along the side of the yard, and last year was the "establishing" stage, where we made the rock wall border, filled it with dirt, and added some plants here and there: herbs by the front walkway, perennials here and there, annuals along the front. Nothing except the herbs really looked or did very well.
This year, I can see that we've created something. The perennials that turned up their toes for me last summer are coming back, and the perennial herbs have been in full leaf for at least a month. The pansies I put in last fall are blooming their hearts out, and there's definitely a plan in sight. I can see where to go from here. It's so satisfying, after mostly muddling around cluelessly last summer and ending up with not much of anything to show for it.
And now it's raining, and everything will be even better for it. And I can sort of see what needs to go into the bare spots. A fabulous feeling.
Today I'm washing towels, and putting away the last of the stuff we had to move out to have the carpets cleaned, and I also baked some oatmeal cookies from this recipe at Simply Recipes. I used dried cherries instead of raisins, almonds instead of walnuts, and added a little almond extract to the dough. They're delicious! Todd is working industriously in the garage, humming away with Barenaked Ladies. It's a good day to stay inside and be comfortable.
Happy birthday to my sweet sister-in-law, Tracy--it was great chatting with you today! I'm glad you were born and found your way into our family!
I had lunch with my friend Cheryl today and bestowed upon her a 2-foot-tall stack of stamping and scrapbooking magazines that I had to clean out in my ongoing Purge of the Scraproom. And we laughed at how magazines take over your life and how we should never buy any more, and then I went to Barnes and Noble and bought two magazines.
However, they were home and garden magazines, which doesn't count, since my previous problem was with hobby magazines. Right?
Also, I don't hoard home mags the way I did hobby mags. So it's all good. Yep, I don't have a problem at all.
Anyway, one of the mags I got was Romantic Homes, which seems to have taken an interesting turn recently. I used to pick it up and flip through it, and it always seemed to be all big curtain swags and floral wallpaper, but I've gotten the last couple issues, and they are really wonderful and more updated and simple.
They have a French editor who writes very peculiarly-worded articles (she has a little essay on the page I linked that is much better written) , but the pictures are pure eye candy. So check it out!
The weather is so ideal this week--cool but sunny, very refreshing. I got all my hair chopped off last week--seriously, like six inches gone--and it feels great to have a light and airy head to go with the springtime breeze. It's been years since I had my hair so short, and it's very layered so I can pull out bits with hair putty and make it look sort of tousled. I have no feminine hair skills, but I can just about manage the hair putty thing.
Now I have to go empty out the living room and dining room so the carpet cleaners can work tomorrow. They're doing the LR, the DR, and the stairs. I've taken a solemn vow never, ever to buy a house from a dog owner again...the previous owner had several dogs, and being a guy, never cleaned up after them, and the spots where they would apparently sit and shed or pee or just emanate doggy odors are just...NASTY. When the air is dry and the windows are shut, the smell isn't too bad, but when the air gets moist and the windows and doors are open--ugh.
Ideally, we'd replace the carpet, but till we can come up with that chunk of change, I'm hoping the carpet guys can at least knock down the aroma a little. We had them cleaned before we moved in, but not realizing the extent of the pet odor problem, we didn't have them do a pet treatment. Tomorrow, I will.
This is part of the reason I have a less-than-warm attitude toward most canines and their owners. Not all, but most!
Off to move books and breakables, wish me luck.
I just wanted to announce that I've been feeling much better the past few days. I stopped taking both medications that were supposed to make me feel better but just made me feel dead, and now that they're out of my system, I feel alive again. Maybe I'm just not meant for better living through chemistry.
Neither medication was keeping me alive or anything like that, so don't anybody worry that I'll be keeling over shortly!
We woke up to about 1/2" of snow over everything this morning--the first snow of the winter and we don't get it till Easter. Go figure. It's mostly melted now, but boy was it cold and breezy today. Wussy little me was whimpering all day.
We spent this morning being fiscally responsible, as Todd did the taxes and I brought our bank accounts up to date. Each of us at our computers, being industrious--it was quite impressive.
Then we went out and drove around looking at the blooming dogwoods and the redbuds and enjoying all the lovely green leaves. We stopped at the Yorktown Victory Center which we've never been to before, and took in as much as we could before closing, which wasn't much. The people that run this place and the Jamestown center put a tremendous amount of thought into it--it's truly impressive. Jamestown has a re-created Indian village, a replica of the Jamestown settlement, and reproductions of the ships the English came over in, complete with tons of re-enactors. Yorktown's site is smaller, but there is a small replica village with re-enactors in costume.
Outside the "kitchen" building, they had a huge vegetable and herb garden, with lots of stuff coming up already: peas, onions, sage, leaf lettuce and spinach. I'm so excited to plant my new herbs this spring, but seeing the veggies, especially the leaf lettuce, made me pine for a vegetable garden of my own. It would be hard to find a good spot for it in our shady back yard, but oh, how I want one. There is nothing better than a salad full of stuff out of your own garden.
They had an herb called burnet there, which I've heard of, but never seen before. I rubbed the leaves, but there was no smell. Sounds like it might be good in salads, and it was a pretty plant. I want to try some new herbs this year--tarragon, for sure, and I don't know what else.
Flowers are hard for me to grow, especially annuals. I never seem to get the spot just right, or I over- or under-water them, or maybe they just hate me, I don't know. But herbs are the darlingest things--they almost always grow beautifully, and it's easy to find lots of info about the best spots for them. And they smell good, and they're useful if you feel like using them, but you can just enjoy them if you want to. I adore growing herbs!
Speaking of flowers, I saw the most GORGEOUS planters in downtown Yorktown--two huge cement urns on either side of a store doorway, and they were planted with yellow pansies, red geraniums, and what else? A clumpy white flower that has been blooming in my garden for a couple months, and whose name I can't remember--candytuft? And there was something blue, too, maybe blue pansies. Anyway, it was stunning--so bright and colorful. I'm craving flowers and colors like candy right now. Just gotta wait till the snow is done!
The clouds are pretty this evening. And it feels like spring is really here.
Time to think about gardens and dirt and paint and furniture. And doors--we're on a mission to replace every interior door plus the front door. Time to scrub the siding and paint the trim and shutters. Time to lay down mulch and put in plants.
Time to think about capri pants and tee shirts and bemoan the winter weight gain.
I'll miss winter...this one was a nice one. We had our evenings in front of the fireplace and our nights under my beloved down comforter. I sleep so well under the weight of that comforter! We had our one snow experience--struggling through a blizzard between Baltimore and Washington one Sunday night in January, but that was all. I actually wanted more snow, one or two of those days inside watching the snow fall, but it was not to be, this winter.
Here comes spring, ready or not.
