Category Archives: garden

Is there a food styling tutorial somewhere? I thought this camera would take awesome photos by itself. I didn’t know the operator had to have a clue.

Here’s my cake. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I didn’t have golden raisins but I had a Trader Joe’s Golden Berry Blend with golden raisins, cherries, cranberries and blueberries. Also I didn’t have dark brown sugar so I used light. It came out spectacular. Bob and I ate a big piece last night to make sure it was okay and the writers gobbled it up this afternoon at our meeting.

These are the bulbs I threw in at the last minute in November. I forgot about them on the workbench. I planted a bunch all around the tree and this is all that came up. But if you look in the background, looks like something else is coming up so I’m in for a surprise, I hope. I should probably track down my order sheet since I can’t remember what I bought or where I put it. When I was digging holes in the ground I was sure I’d remember.

I’ve been so busy today I haven’t had 5 minutes to pull up my socks until now. The 80th bday party was super fun and the pot roast dinner turned out fabulous. Now I’m so tired I can hardly see straight.

This is the biggest pumpkin out in the front yard and I swear every time I look at it, it’s measurably bigger. There’s another good sized one in the backyard but the critters have already nibbled on it. This is why I don’t worry about having too many pumpkins because something (squirrels? raccoons? opossum?) wreck most of them. The animals usually eat them as soon as they’re as big as a grape.

My sunflowers are thriving. I didn’t pull any so my entire garden is a forest of sunflowers. The tomato plants are big and dripping with tons of green tomatoes. Nothing even looks close to getting ripe. We’re having a rainy streak which was nice at first but is moving into the category of dismaying. Outside my office window it looks like November right now. eek. I’ve got a few lettuce-y type plants and beets that don’t seem to grow. That covers it.

We have an endless abundance of lawn weeds in the form of little yellow flowers. I spent hours weeding on Sunday and you can barely tell. In a related story I decided to devote a couple of hours to filing at the office yesterday. I decided that weeding and filing are the same: lots of work with little progress and there’s always more on the way.

This is a rambling post meandering to different topics if you’re not getting that yet. I don’t know if I’ve written exactly about this as much as hinted about it but I submitted a short story last week for the first time in eons.

A shortish version of my writing career is I wrote various stuff for a long time and then wrote a novel which took years (Linking to exact pages is too depressing but if you’re interested the newsletters tell the tale starting in the early 90’s.) In 2001 I did a workshop and did my last major push for publication which yielded a tiny bit of interest and that’s it. Then I took a screenwriting class and did that for a few years and for a long time it was fun until it became no longer fun and I got to a point where I no longer enjoyed even the thought of writing and quit.

I took a Photoshop class and learned how to work a sewing machine and tried new cooking things. But I never felt very good about not writing and it’s taken awhile but I’m enjoying it again and finally completed and submitted something and it’s a whole new world out there.

When I was on vacation I think my domain hosting tweaked their spam filtering because I had 150 spam for one week and normally I get about 3 a day. The spam filtering gives you the option of sending the spam to a folder or sending out into the ethers and I realize the drawbacks of this decision but I picked the ethers. Going to the spam folder to look for misfiled email was like a part time job and I very rarely found any real email and even then it was someone I bought something from who wanted me to buy more things. I noted the sudden spike in my spam with a “hm?” and never thought of it again.

I recently noticed I haven’t been getting any comments from here. In case anyone reading doesn’t know how it works, in addition to being posted on the page, blog comments are sent via email to the blogger. I figured my loyal commenter was disappointed that the posts have been so boring lately. But later I noticed that there were new comments. Even from new people. I guess the comments are flying off into the ethers with the spam and I should probably investigate further but for now the comments have been redirected to a gmail account so comment away secure in the knowledge that I’m appreciative and actually seeing all the comments.

One last thing before I go Bob and I have been loving the HBO show Flight of the Conchords. It’s hilarious.

I wasn’t going to take any more photos but this flower is ginormous. I tried to put a ruler next to it but my arm’s too short and the light looked funny.

I’m on my way out the door for a week long adventure in the boonies with no Internet. I had a couple of planned posts and other pictures but some other projects got in the way and now here I am in a big rush trying to everything at the last minute.

Hope you all have a fun week and see you when I get back.

It’s already after 8pm. Where has this day gone?

I slept in until 7:30 — I know, lazy butt, but I woke up in the middle of the night and thought about the Lost season finale and was disturbed all over again. That was a good one. Then I did some writing and some yoga.

Had a massage and then worked in the yard, swept out the last of the ants from the shop, did a C+ on vacuuming and now I’ve cobbled together a quickie dinner. I still haven’t gotten my act together to organize the Reno trip so here’s what we’ve got.

Remember the colleague’s messy office that he cleaned?

Here’s what it looked like when it was in my office for filing. We’ve been at the new firm for 2 years now and this is the third time I’ve done major filing. I almost always have billable work to do so I leave filing for later and then I have mountains of it. It doesn’t look as bad sitting here but that’s a lot of filing.

I spent the entire day on Thursday just filing. You’d think it would look like I made more progress. At least the piles on the floor are gone.

Part of the problem is that there is so much stuff and I’m full up. So what I need to do is archive a bunch of stuff and box it up which takes for freakin ever and/or put it outside on some shelves we have in the hallway.

Last night we did a quick store run and I bought two more tomato plants to fill out my garden. I already have two but I think one is a cherry tomato which is not my favorite and I like to have lots so I can complain about having too many and I can share and make tomato soup. I left them in the shop for planting today.

Bob was getting ready for camping this weekend and went “schwoocht!” with one of the tent poles. While I was watching Lost, Bob came in holding this plant and he said, “Sorry I hurt your plant.” He accidentally decapitated the beefsteak. I planted it anyway and stuck the head in some water just in case it reanimates.

And for entertainment purposes: What does a Bob look like?.

I’m back. The conference was fantastic but, sadly, the most gorgeous man in the world was nowhere to be seen. Or, he’s hit on some bad times and I no longer recognized him. But that was the only disappointment. The rest of the gathering way exceeded my expectations.

I’ll write more about the event later and I have lots of photos.

Meanwhile, I’m back to my usual tricks and fretting about all the things I need to do and as I fret, I’m completely paralyzed about what to do first and how to prioritize. Wilma spoke about this very thing although she was speaking in the context of accomplishing something for your people and I’m talking about just getting the house cleaned up and some dahlias in the ground.

The big news is: look at my pumpkin sprouts!

I planted the seeds last Sunday. I took photos every twelve hours because the seeds sprout so quickly you can practically stand there and watch. First you see a green dot in the soil. A couple hours later you can see a bigger green dot. Next thing you know the first two leaves are unfolding.

I’m going to do a whole photos stream from seeds to pumpkin pie in November.

Isn’t there something appealing about time-elapse photo projects? Don’t you love the movie montages where they take the rundown old shack and transform it into a bright cheery home for the orphans? Or the fat, frowsy nerdgirl gets contacts and a haircut, does some sit-ups and puts on some tight jeans and suddenly looks like Scarlett Johansson?

Since the sun is out, I think gardening should be today’s main project.

I got my wish and we’ve had garden weather. I decided to pick one area to focus on and I went for the front bed because this the first thing I see when I drive up after a long day at the office and it would be nice to enjoy something pretty. The photo above is the before picture. Last Fall I did very little clean up out front partly because I’m lazy and partly because the neighborhood cats seem to think that fresh clear dirt is an invitation for them to come on over and do all their business.

The front flower bed was my main project but when you’re out in the yard at this time of year, everywhere you look there’s work to do. So as I went back to find a shovel I’d get sidetracked whacking back some dead branches and then when I went back to get the yard debris can I’d find a few dandelions to dig up so I kept busy without finishing a whole lot. This shows the bed after I finished cleaning out the dead stuff. The remaining plants, besides the lavender, are a couple of orange things that I think reseed themselves every year and they look nice and they’re already there so I left them in.

Whatever gene people have where they know about color and decorating/arranging is a gene that I was born without. Or maybe not. I like to think that creativity is about effort and I don’t put a whole lot of effort into figuring out color/decorating/arranging. When it comes to gardening I go the big box store garden center and walk around and buy things that I like and look like I can keep alive without much thought to the big picture. If you saw a picture of my entire yard, this would not surprise you.

When I went to the big box garden center everything they had that I liked was purple. I knew the front already had orange but I wanted to buy what I liked so I’m just hoping that when everything comes in all flowery and colorful that the neighbors are impressed by my bold color choice. The above is the bed when I finished with it. This part is always a bit demoralizing when you’ve done so much work and you’re all dirty and stinky and you have these teeny little plants swimming in a huge pile of dirt. (Which the cats have already scratched in, not 24 hours later!) A month from now it will look amazing, hopefully, and I still might go get some petunias at Fred Meyer for some extra color in the front bare spots.

In addition to the front bed, I planted a new rose in the front where the old one met an early end during some enthusiastic lawn mowing. The rose was on sale for half price which leads me to believe that only an idiot would plant a rose bush at this time of year but I think the purpose of this entire post is to support the idea that I am that idiot. I also planted some random plant that looked like it would get big and pretty and thrive on neglect and I have a corner of the backyard that needs just this sort of plant.

My next door neighbor was working on his raspberries and asked if I would like a few canes. Perfect because last year I dug up my raspberry patch since it it never produced more than 6 raspberries. So I set this all up. My neighbor’s patch is so prolific that he showed up at our door twice last summer with a 10 gallon bowl of raspberries begging us to take some. It would make more sense for me to grow something different and then trade. But I like raspberries and he’ll just have to knock on more doors next summer.

We interrupt our World Cup coverage to bring you this fantastic development: baby turnips!

I haven’t been spending enough time in the garden lately between the Home Improvement and soccer and that job thing I have.

After my 6am to 2pm stint in front of the TV I decided the best thing for me would be to get my ass outside and work on the weed farm.

I remember planting a bunch of greens, a few turnips (from an untried type-previous attempts to grow turnips have resulted in wormy plooey) and some beets. I wondered why all my lettuce looked so ooky.

This afternoon I poked around out there and what do you know? Beautiful little white turnips. My favorite food. (Outside of the sugar, fat and alcohol groups). I’m so pleased.