someone promised me a rose garden

I had been meaning to blog more often this week, but it's turning out to be a much busier and difficult week than I anticipated. It's almost over, I know, and it's a long weekend to boot — but we've got so much to get done around the house that it doesn't feel like a holiday. We are getting all sorts of things installed next week, and my grandmother is coming in exactly 8 days, so it's rush-rush-rush now.

When we bought the house (in the middle of winter), we were told that there was a rose garden under the snow. It didn't appear last year — there was one lone bush of wild roses, with a few blooms — but I didn't think too much of it. But this year:









The scabrosas (the last two) are a particular surprise. I had assumed that they had been regular thorny hedges.

cut peonies are better than no peonies at all

We were up at the farm this weekend (for a reason I'll blog about later), and the best thing about being at the farm in June, specifically — aside from the company which, happily, isn't confined to a single month — is that the peonies are in bloom, and my father-in-law always lets me cut some for my table.


One of these is from the parent stock of the root I planted last fall. We're not really sure which one — even my father-in-law isn't — and I've given up on finding out this year. That little plant looks like it's still alive, at least, but it's little — I'd say maybe a foot tall, which is kind of dispiriting for a peony. I'm not sure if it's because this is its first year — supposedly, they don't bloom in their first year — or if it really is struggling. Apparently peonies don't like to compete with things, and my garden is a plant-eat-plant kind of place.

Similarly, I am kind of demoralised right now. I spent an awfully long time weeding and taking care of the garden a mere two weeks ago, and now it is overgrown and scraggly again. I know, intellectually, that that's what happens, but instinctively I felt very defensive every time Pd pointed out a weed or an overgrown bush — I did work in the garden; I have kept my resolution (so far) — this isn't like last year at all! And yet.

flowers, and a cat

I usually take a quick glance at the garden when I leave for work in the morning, and yesterday I received a nice surprise:


I had given up on its blooming. It seemed healthy enough, but it's been growing much more slowly than its cousin, which has been blooming for about two weeks. It's not in an ideal spot — less sunny as it is closer to the porch, slightly shaded by a forsythia, and much wetter — I found out recently that part of our downspout drains into that bed — so I had reconciled myself to only one blooming calla lily this year.

When I bought the bulbs (they came in one package), I had thought that they were going to be full-size callas, but it looks like they're miniatures. Which I prefer, in any case.


The basil is also blooming. I know I should be plucking its flowers to encourage growth, but as it's an annual and will die off anyway (and I've got more than enough leaves to use this summer), I can't be bothered.


Besides which, I am hoping that maybe it will seed itself into the plot and grow back after all — although I doubt that, in this climate. But perhaps I will be able to salvage enough to pot up to last me through the winter.

...
Also, and I should have mentioned this yesterday, Tuesday turned nine years old.


We didn't do anything special to celebrate (uhm, she's a cat), but I thought I would note it for posterity. Happy Birthday, Cat. You are just as adorable and annoying as you were eight years and ten months ago, but I love you anyway. And I can't believe I've spent the last almost-nine years dealing with your fur on my clothes.

identified at last

Last night, I was in the den — which faces the street — with the windows wide open when a neighbourhood nature tour-type group came by. (I don't actually know who they were — I looked out the window and there were a group of adults, 10 to 15 of them, with notepads, and a person, obviously a guide of some sort, talking.) They had stopped in front of our house. I didn't want them to see me, so I stood next to the window, out of sight, but when she said, "This small tree is one of my favourite kinds of trees. Can anyone tell me what it is?" I pricked up my ears.

And so, a wee bit of eavesdropping and a confirmatory trip to Google later, I can now tell you that the tree in front of our house is a Saskatoon berry.


This is an old photo from April, 2010, i.e., before the yard started blooming. It doesn't look like this right now.
This apparently explains why this one particular robin keeps trying to attack the tree (or perching on it — and then falling off because the tree branches are wee and can't take its weight. It's actually very funny). Supposedly the berries are edible, but difficult to get because they are popular with birds; as soon as they're ripe (in early summer), the birds swoop in and get them all.

I feel very proud of myself and my detective skills. It still counts, doesn't it, even if it required a large dose of serendipity?

colour therapy

I have been really into bright colours lately — odd because I'm very much a neutrals kind of girl. (Remember, my house = moody blues and greys, exclusively. Well, almost.) My wardrobe is still neutral — I am not giving up my love of grey-blue — but the house might be undergoing a slight metamorphosis. Here's a sneak peek:


It's just one room — one wall of one room — I'm not really that adventurous. I will admit that I had instant regrets after painting it. Pd convinced me to see it through, and it is almost exactly what I envisioned — but I'm not sure if it was the heat or the hormones that made me envision something quite so outside my comfort zone.

(And I know: outside my comfort zone is allegedly good for me, but I'm not sure I want to grow as a person any more. I'm perfectly satisfied with my character, built as-is.)

Happy solstice, everyone!

LEGO paradise

A few weeks ago, Pd and I happened to be in Etobicoke, so we took a small detour to Sherway Gardens to visit the LEGO store.


It's smaller than I imagined it to be, and had about the same atmosphere as the Apple store — lots of people milling about, adults playing with toys.


The famous wall o' bricks
Supposedly, when they first opened, they had had a LEGO R2D2, which I would have loved to see. Unfortunately, we had to make do with a stunning Tower bridge:


Pd told me that, apparently, LEGO's patent on their bricks had run out, so that anyone can make LEGO-fitting bricks. Thus, the company has pivoted its emphasis from making plain architectural bricks to what he calls "set pieces" — boxes that people buy to build specific things. I don't know if this is true, but the store certainly didn't carry any of those giant plastic buckets o' bricks that I remember, and each section of wall had a theme.

There was the Harry Potter wall, which was very, very tempting.


The Star Wars wall, next to the Pirates of the Caribbean wall.


I love LEGO buildings — even the set pieces — but ultimately it's a bit of a let-down, really. I mean, you have to compromise on size, of course, but why is the Hogwarts Great Hall so small? Why does the Death Star only have four levels?

(I complain, but still: I would have happily spent my mortgage payment at that store. They have Diagon Alley! And the Queen Anne's Revenge!)

victory!

They're actually not completely ripe yet (the side hidden from the sun isn't as red as it could be), but I had to take them or abandon them to the slugs. They had, it turns out, already taken a smaller one from a nearby plant. So I plucked them this morning and by tonight they should be ripe enough to eat (!). They're not very big — about an inch long — and the cultivar is the common Ozark Beauty, which is everbearing. This means, of course, that I have another harvest to look forward to — if I can keep the animals away.

(I know; I should have had a net. They ripened faster than I anticipated — only a week or so ago, they were still very small and green. And this first crop was so close to the ground as to the berries literally lying on it, so I'm not sure how much protection I could have given them from the slugs.)

Finally, a sidenote: I think I've discovered what I'm sensitive to in the garden: it's the strawberry leaves. (Not the fruit itself; just the leaves.) Apparently it's not uncommon, and the rash is mild. (It is, however, taking forever to fade — it's still visible on my skin.) Dr Google had a picture and it's definitely the same kind.

berry watch 2011

I am keeping an eagle eye on these. (The terra cotta is to keep them from touching the ground, just in case it gets too wet.) So far they have been undisturbed, but I am fully committed to swooping in just when they're ripe and thereby depriving the Evil Squirrel (and/or any winged allies). There are others, but these are the furthest along.

Everyone but everyone was out gardening yesterday (including me). I guess we all wanted to be take advantage of the lack of searing sun before the forecasted rain hit (although the latter never actually did). It was nice. Pd asked me if I spoke to anyone. I didn't, really — everybody was gardening, not talking! All you could see were people bending over.



The last mystery shrub in our garden has bloomed, so I can finally identify it: it's a weeping weigela. (Don't ask me the cultivar, though. It's pink, that's all I can tell you.) It's actually very pretty, but it makes that entire corner the only shade spot in the garden. There's also a hosta under there — not that you can see it, really.


And yes, towering ferns. I have a sneaky suspicion that they are ostrich ferns — or maybe that is just hopeful greediness talking. I will have to more sleuthing between now and the next fiddlehead season.

happy-making

Is it perverse, or just sad, that I sort of want it to rain, just so I would have the chance to use my new umbrella?


Not that I would have wanted to be outside in last night's storm(s) by any means. But it was cool to watch, from the snug dryness of my kitchen.

I've been lusting after one of these for some time — it's made by Marimekko, and my favourite stationery store carries them. (I don't see the connection — they also carry laptop and messenger bags, but nothing else by Marimekko — but I'm not going to question it.) It's in one of my favourite colour combinations, and it's just generally happy-making. And when else does one need happy-making but when it's wet and dreary outside?

...
Edited to add: Incidentally, and apropos of absolutely nothing, it seems we live in a neighbourhood of scavengers, and I LOVE IT. A few weeks back, we replaced our sink — yes, the big 40-inch one we just put in last year. It cracked. (And not in a purely cosmetic, around-the-drain webbing way that some old porcelain sinks do, but in a gigantic, covering half-the-sink hairline fracture kind of way. When it happened, it was so loud that I thought Pd had somehow dropped a dictionary in the bathtub — I know, that makes no sense, but I was half-asleep and that was what my brain thought.) Anyway, we contacted the company, and after some back-and-forth (and some delivery miscommunications), they gave us another one. So the bathroom looks exactly the same, just with a proper sink.

Anyway, we put the (old) sink out on the curb for the garbage pick-up, and ... someone took it, within a few hours. We didn't see them do it, but obviously it didn't just wander off. It's a bit perplexing — I mean, it's a beautiful sink, but with the fracture it's also pretty useless. We think maybe someone took it to use as a planter. Which, okay — more power to them, but that thing is heavy. How did someone manage to cart it away without any warning?

This week, we put out our old washer and dryer — the ones that had come with the house. (We had replaced them with High-Eff ones — yes, these have been sitting in our garden shed for over a year.) And, again, someone took them. And, I know — washers and dryers are expensive machines, so it's not a surprise. But these ones were so old that even Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill didn't want them (which is why we've had them for so long — we kept trying to find a charity who was willing to come by and cart them away). We hadn't Freecycled them because I figured, who would take what Goodwill wouldn't? But I guess that was a mistake.

Someone also took the microwave that came with the house, the one that didn't have a handle any more and looked like it had been manufactured in the 70s out of brown Bakelite. (I don't know if it worked still or not. I was too scared to try.)

So, you see. Scavengers. Which is good, but you have to act fast. Someone put out a child-sized Poang chair the other day, as Pd and I went for a walk, and we couldn't decide whether or not to rescue it. By the time we came back, it was already gone.

tidbits

Quick garden update:

The tulips are gone, but pretty much everything else is in bloom, including the irises:


A four-year-old came by and stared at me while I was taking the picture. Finally she asked me why I was taking pictures of flowers, so I told her, "because I want to show my friends what they look like." Then she gave me an even more perplexed look. Her mother tried to diffuse the situation by pointing out that we have irises, too, and they're purple — her favourite colour. No dice. That kid is going to be the Queen of Making Other People Feel Awkward someday.


The strawberries are coming along nicely, don't you think? I'm very excited, and determined that the Evil Squirrel will not have them. He's come back, to check out the garden; I think it's his territory. (One squirrel looks about the same to me as any other, but Pd says it's the same squirrel. I asked him how he knew, and he said, "the pattern of mange." This does not make me feel better.)

Finally, does anyone know what this is?


It's getting too hot to work in the garden on the weekend, which is bad, because I really do need to get out there and weed. And does someone want to tell me why the rhubarb suddenly looks flattened? It's splayed and ... well, flat. A lot of the stalks are just barely ripe, so I don't think it could be the weight of the leaves. My current theory is that a family of raccoons fell on it. It's not the most plausible theory, but it's the most amusing one.

for a messy person, I handle clutter remarkably poorly

One of the concessions I made about the pregnancy and renovations was that I wouldn't take part in anything that was too dusty. The problem, of course, is that, until this week, it's been too rainy to do any of the cutting (of drywall, subfloor, or floor) outside — not to mention that they've been measuring and cutting as they go, rather than all at once — so, while the boys have been renovating, I've been elsewhere.

Mostly the kitchen.

No, really. It smacks a little bit too much of traditional gender roles, but, I mean — these people are in my house, literally rebuilding a room for me. The least I can do is feed them. That's one reason. Another is that, honestly, I really can't eat pizza that often — not even in undergrad. Which means that somebody has to cook, and that somebody might as well be the one person who isn't laying floor. That's another reason.

And finally, I think I have been a little bit obsessed with keeping the kitchen tidy because it's literally the only place where I can do that right now. The second floor is a write-off, including the bedroom. And the living room is slowly devolving, because I've been either buying or scrounging around for books and magazines, and after I've finished them there's no place to put them away (yet). So they're sitting in piles. Ditto my spring and summer jackets, and shoes — I've needed them (for obvious reasons), but they're such a pain to get in and out of the second bedroom right now that I just leave them out. (When I don't have to dodge around bookshelves and office chairs, it's much easier to put them away.) So the foyer, which leads off the living room — also a mess.

Meanwhile, the dining room has turned into the de facto office, as the actual desk is in the bedroom (but partially blocked off), and the filing is in the second bedroom (almost entirely blocked off). So the dining table now has all the stuff that we need to keep track off, like the contact for the window quote guy and bills that we've paid but need to keep. And that pretty much covers the entirety of the house, except for the bathroom (which is too small to store anything other than bathroom necessities, thank God), and the hallways ... which have paint cans lining their walls. Both floors.

(There is the basement, which I am also not supposed to spend too much time in because of the whole toxoplasmosis cat litter thing.)

So, you see: I am going mad. Cooking is good, because it distracts me and makes me go mad slightly more slowly. And the payoff is usually eatable, which is a plus.

The whole point of writing all this was to preamble a great spaghetti sauce I wanted to share with you, but this post is far too long and wordy as it is, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Here's a renovation update, instead:


Last weekend was a painting weekend — they had finished the drywall and initial mudding on the long weekend, and Pd finished the rest of the mudding through the week. I'm going to hold back on the reveal until the whole thing is done, but you can see the aftermath (and some of the colours) in the picture above. They put the flooring in last night so, if we manage to do a second coat of the paint in the erstwhile den tonight, we might be able to move furniture back into the two rooms by this weekend.

After that we'll have another room to paint — we need to stagger them as we've moving our bedroom from one room to another, and while we're using low-VOC paint, they still need to air out for a few days before we can sleep in them — and then more furniture moving, and then unpacking/decorating. Everything needs to be done by the end of the July long weekend. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we've plotted it out, and we might squeak in just under the wire — essentially, we are saying that we need to set up half the house, from scratch, in a month. While working full-time and subtracting two weekends lost from prior work and social commitments. I'm not saying it's not do-able, I'm just saying that it's ... well. Ambitious.