Everything Old is New Again

At the old house we kept a vegetable plot in the adjacent community garden. The arrangement was super convenient. Not only was the garden a couple hundred feet from our front door, but the organizers had helpfully erected a six foot tall fence with multiple doors, dug a well and run water lines, and made available tilling services.  All this is nice and takes a lot of the heartbreak out of growing edibles.

You can't see them, but there are zucchini here. Tomatoes, too.

But we've moved.  In this house we're on our own, infrastructure- wise. Since I am disinclined to wrap my yard in chain link fence to ward off critter-related losses I'm just going to have to, as they say at the office, operate at risk. At least for now. We're less than two miles from the old place so will likely see the same deer, rabbits, ground hogs and raccoon we've come to know lo these many years. So be it and may I get a nibble or two for my trouble.

When it comes to vegetables, I am not much for glam and flash. Ours is strictly a radish, lettuce, tomato, bean, and squash operation. If I'm feeling fancy, and this year I think I am, I'll put up a bean trellis. We can't do much, really, because the only sunny spot in the year isn't very big - I might be able to squeeze, I don't know, six by 10 feet out of it. 

This weekend's big plans are to dig the bed out from the place where...I don't know what used to grow. There are some things that look bulb-like there, an overgrown rose of some beleaguered type and a lilac which is the only thing I'm planning to keep. Next time you see this area, it'll be chock full of either veggie plants or maybe the chewed up stubs of veggie plants.  Either way, there's work ahead.

Once More With Feeling

Among the things I’m enjoying the most about the new house are the unfolding garden surprises.  The original owners of the house, from whose estate we purchased the property, were clearly very enthusiastic gardeners.  Every time I think to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have an X, Y, or Z around here?” I find, within a few days,  it’s growing off to the side just waiting to be noticed. In this way I found Bleeding Hearts, a white lilac, six peonies, Lily of the Valley, and what I think might be a good number of irises. It’s a fun trick, this conjuring, one I wish I could use with, say, sacks of small bills.

The troubled bed, dead stuff gone & pansies added by request

We’re trying to go slowly with changes or improvements. Someone advised us to wait a year to see what’s around before investing much time or money. Generally, this is good advice but the septic and tree work we’ve had done have laid waste to an awful lot of the lawn so we’re jumping in, albeit cautiously, removing things that appear dead or in distress and making judicious additions (such as the annuals that one is obligated by law to purchase when one’s 9 year-old insists perennials are No Fun At All).  One bed near the front of the house needs a good amount of attention and maybe a nice planting diagram.  Baby steps.  We’re here for the long haul so along with the garden I am trying to cultivate patience.

In her final illness, the original owner of the house jotted down care directions and I feel duty-bound to follow her instruction.  From what we can tell she was a fastidious woman and very precise in her housekeeping. Reading her notes feels a bit like having a personal garden tutor, one who lived and worked at this very spot even before I was born.  If she wants the lilac pruned a certain way, you can bet that’s exactly what I will do. 

Now with mulch!

In the meantime, we've done that very grown-up thing and bought a tremendous amount of mulch. It makes a difference, no? Anchored by a peony on one end and an azalea (a plant about which I am conflicted, but for now we're going to go with it) in the middle I can see this bed with some Black-Eyed Susan toward the far end and maybe a climbing rose up the wall. I don't know. We'll see.  For now, I've got the creeping phlox in there, a decidedly pedestrian choice that I love for its color and easy, good-natured spread. 

I'm not a natural gardener and any green thumb I might posses is often diminished by my highly distractible nature. These gardens are nearly 50 years old. I couldn't possibly harm them all in the first summer, right?

Wet Curry and Dry Wine

I've been away for several weekends in a row. Each trip was fun - the race thing in Orlando was notable in this regard, as was the interview needed to have a(nother) dog join the family - but I notice keenly the lack of pre-workweek time when I don't have it. Arriving home at 10 p.m. and reporting to work at 7:30 a.m. the next day is kind of, not to put to fine a point on it, a bummer.  All the more so when one relies, as so many of us do, on split-second timing for dinners, kid activities and so on, and when weekends are the time when shopping, cleaning and cooking mostly happen. Not to mention laundry, but the less said about that the better.

Anyway, I'm here today and making up for lost time. There have been two basketball games, resulting in the slightly regrettable end of my daughter's basketball season with the second loss in a double-elimination playoff series (she's sad but I - well, let me put it this way:  basketball started in NOVEMBER which is quite long enough to my way of thinking), frolicking with the dog, some DVR clearing (Nigella! Dharma & Greg!) and, to set me up for future weekends away, cooking.

I'm one of those women who is deeply in love with her slow cooker and who makes use of a stand alone freezer. With basketball on this weekend's agenda I zipped up via slow cookers a batch each of yellow dal and wet curry, both of which will be frozen for future meals. Now, a good friend of mine - also my former boss and emigre from Delhi - is completely scandalized by my efforts to make Indian-type food in my slow cookers but I am undeterred by her lack of enthusiasm. I would go mad without a wide variety of options in my freezer and what my dal lacks in authenticity it more than makes up for in delicious convenience.

Wet curry, pre-cooking. Better than it looks!

Likewise the curry.  This is the kind of thing that you freeze in cup-size portions and then add to whatever meat or veg you cook up, maybe with a little broth or canned diced tomatoes to loosen it a bit. For this, a good amount of onion, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, turmeric, chiles and...I don't know, salt and stuff, cover the waterfront. After 10 or so hours  all will blend up and then freeze nicely. I'll be glad for this as spring marches on and free time becomes more scarce.

So that's that. I've been more productive, household-wise, than yesterday and am glad for it. Between a late-breaking conference call and the first of my daughter's weekend games, I was completely done in by last night's dinner time. I had planned on pizza but...no crust was started and whatever. Flash forward half an hour and we sat before Vietnamese noodle bowls and BYO sauvignon blanc, trying to explain to the kids the difference between "wet" and "dry" wines. As dinner conversations go it was a great way to close up a busy, exasperating, and mostly fun week.

All The News

At just about two months in, 2013 is proving to be a shaking-things-up kind of year.  Last year was a mix of the frankly sucky and the incredibly lucky - and if we hadn't experienced the latter, the former would have surely taken us under.  Through time and attention the sucky part is nearly completely resolved (that is not my story to tell, otherwise I would be spilling all over these bytes and bits).  The luck?  Well, it never lasts forever, does it, so I'm resolved to enjoy while it sticks around.

I have a new role at work that is presenting a much-welcomed intellectual challenge. I have edged out of my comfort zone in a way that is exhilarating and exasperating in equal measures. At the same time, I'm working aggressively on several entrepreneurial efforts about which I hope soon to be able to speak freely.  This is good!  Busy, but very, very good. And exciting.

 

Kid-wise we're back in a bit of an in-between so calm prevails there, too.  Basketball is winding down, riding has not yet wound up to its full non-winter activity level (did you know that riding is a year-round sport? I didn't!), my son is returning to full activity slowly (see also: not my story, above) by managing one of the middle school baseball teams and joining his sister in golf lessons. So, you know, the usual but with more dinner-time breathing room.  Grades are good, friends have been made, and the quibbles we have with their schools are minor. 

 

Here in the new house, we're pretty much unpacked and set up. We'd love to put in an addition and update the kitchen a bit, but if that doesn't happen it's all good. There are minimal boxes left to manage (and those that remain unpacked just might get deposited at the preschool rummage sale on the grounds that I clearly don't need whatever is in them) and only one or two pieces of furniture that would make everything just right.  Oh! And my favorite decorative piece - displayed after seeing so many similar examples in this season's shelter mags - was sourced out of my parents' basement. Vintage 70s style for zero dollars! I wonder what else my mom has down there? She's a one-woman episode of Storage Wars, but with the added attraction of being generous with what she has and nearly always willing to hand off to her daughters. 

 

So that's the update, more or less. Wait! No, I almost forgot to talk about the whole race thing. Yes, I ran a race.  A short one, only 5k and pretty slowly at that, but still. While I'm pretty sure I'll leave the real athletic accomplishments to my sister, who recently completed her first half marathon, I kind of like this whole being active thing. There's also been talk around the homestead of buying kayaks and taking up tennis.  Those of you who have been around a while can attest that this is Not Like Me. In a good way, I think. 

 

Now that's really it. I'm thinking I might be around a bit this time.  Stick with me?

There Can Be Only One

Land with horses, but not Horseland

My daughter has discovered an animated series called Horseland and I'm pretty sure she's taken all of a week to glom the entire three seasons.  I've never heard of the originating network so thank goodness for our friends at Netflix because the show and it's boppy theme song have helped ease her anxiety around having moved and a wee spot of friend drama.  We don't typically allow much screen time during the week, although an episode just before bedtime seems to ease things along so it's a rule that I bend easily.

But! That's not the point of sharing the miracle of Horseland.  The point is that last night as I was sort of listening along to the the gentle, heart-warming lessons of barn life I became gradually aware that one of the characters sound just like Captain Picard.  How delightfully random!  Patrick Stewart is A++ awesome in my book so that made Horseland an even better choice for snuggle time viewing.  So I chatted with the girl about voicing as a subset of the dramatic arts and even looked up a picture of Stewart so she could see who it was I was so thrilled to hear.  There may have been a segue into A Christmas Carol and a short time stuck in the weeds of the Star Trek video game franchise.  To recover, I suggest we look into Horseland's history.

What ho! The wise and witty, if a bit bossy, collie Shep isn't voiced by Patrick Stewart at all.  It's Sean Connery.  Friends, I will not lie, I squeed.  Before I could recount the history of Bond films or how I discovered Highlander back in the days when we had to go to video stores to watch a movie at home, she took the viewing gadget and left the room.  Ungrateful for my attempt at educating her, but what can I do?

Later I made a comment to my husband about the Patrick Stewart/Sean Connery mis-identification and he was completely scandalized. How could I not know the difference? Was all of his Star Trek education for naught? Did I learn nothing from those Bond marathons? He is aghast.  All I can say in my defense is that I evidently have legions of Batman fans, to bring yet another mythology to this long and pointless tale, on my side.  I may not be as satisfying a geek as some might hope, but at least I'm not completely crazy.