Greenridge Chronicles

Wednesday Amuse Bouche

2012-01-24T21:01:00.001-08:00

How Did That Happen?

2012-01-24T16:07:00.000-08:00

Look at last week's bleak midwinter picture out my kitchen window (hum a little Rossetti to get you in the mood). It was so very cold. The water in the bird baths was just like a stone: hard cold and unyielding to any beak that might befall it. And just look at that sad sad kale. It's cold, even wrapped in its fleecy blanket of reemay.

I feel somewhat concerned for the bird population in this weather. Those little bushtits are, well, little. Last year we found a few old sparrows in the snow, spent from age and cold, and it was rather a depressing experience. When the cold winds hit this year I spent some time layering fir boughs and straw, under the deck furniture, for them to shelter in at night. Then I made a few batches of home-made suet and hung extra cages on the deck. Now we have bushtits, nuthatches, towhees, juncos, and other little winged ephemera morning and afternoon, clustering on the feeders.

But now the snow has gone and we're back to balmy wet weather. I'm out of the snow boots and into the gum boots, which are, inexplicably, much warmer.

And look - I step away from the computer for one second and the computer monkeys are up to no good:

my son max is amazing

I did not write that. I'll give you one guess who did...

What Happened While I Was Sleeping

2012-01-18T20:47:00.000-08:00

I want to say that it came silently, on little cat feet, creeping over harbours then moving on, but this little cat foot shows no signs of going anywhere at the moment.

At least it's very atmospheric, but it's also really cold. This afternoon the thermostat registered -2ºC. I spent a good deal of time arranging bundles of fir boughs on the back deck, with straw underneath, for the little birds to shelter under tonight.

Here's how FDPG and Dominic spent much of their afternoon: sledding and towing each other on sleds.

We went through a lot of clothing today, and now it's all dripping damply in the basement.

Readying itself for tomorrow.

In Which I Want To Shout—

2012-01-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

—It works! It really works!

The winter gardening ideas I learned about from Eliot Coleman, that is. They really work. Over the summer I read his Four Season Harvest, used his ideas for my tomato trellises, used more ideas for my compost and winter garden, and on the weekend a very colourful harvest emerged from the various cold frames and plastic tunnels in the back yard. I've also got three bins of finished compost, all ready for spring planting. I don't think I've ever had such inspiring-looking compost, either. It's rich and crumbly and fragrant with summer magic.

Still Life On Kitchen Counter:
purple sprouting broccoli, kale, golden beets, Thai dragon chilies, and tiny lemons.

Let's Hope It's Just A Temporary Glitch

2012-01-17T09:20:00.000-08:00

Were you watching Saturday Night Live this past weekend? I was, but only because Daniel Radcliffe was hosting. I like him - he's equal parts humble and self-consciously witty. You don't see that often in an actor.

Here's a skit that encapsulates what I find unsettling in some of the twenty somethings I know: certain relatives I have, kids we run into, my clueless neighbours. They have this cheery obliviousness to anything that doesn't involve either themselves or their electronic gadgets. They spend hours posting tweets about what they just ate, where they just spent some money (usually obtained from indulgent parents), or what they're thinking about doing that evening. It's all so weirdly shallow coming from an age group that shouldn't be — still — so weirdly shallow.

Plus, it's a funny skit.

(check out this Extras cameo to see more Daniel Radcliffe)

Growling Along

2012-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

We went for a walk this morning, Dominic and I. It was cold and there was a slight dusting of snow on the ground. The moon was briefly visible behind the scudding clouds and the ducks were oddly busy in the skies, despite the dark hour. We were both chilled, even with our scarves and hats and mitts and boots, but we both agreed that winter is definitely on the wane, and that made us feel glad.

The mornings are getting lighter, at least, they're lighter once we're on the homeward stretch. We don't need the flashlight across the trestle bridge anymore (to keep cyclists from bumping into us in the dark), although I sometimes shine it into the bushes when one of us hears an alarming rustle in the brush, because we're on a bit of a cougar alert. There have been a number of sightings in our neck of the woods, which is hardly surprising given that we live so close to a wooded area, not to mention the preponderance of deer in the area. As is usual with these things, the general public is divided as to whether there are too many deer or just the perfect amount, and the letters to the editor section of the newspaper is filled with ~~bleeding hearts who never seriously garden~~ comments protesting the proposed cull. You can guess which side I'm on. Having deer chase grown men and dogs down the street, seeing them getting whacked (in grisly ways) by cars on downtown city streets, not to mention hearing awful stories about them smashing through windows during rutting season, is all I need to know that we have an overabundance of this one particular animal. I'm also sick of chasing them out of my garden - and wondering when they'll decide to chase ME. Besides, where there's an overabundance of one animal in town there's very often a predator just itching to follow that big fat juicy trail into town. Ask any wildlife biologist.

I can do without cougar sightings in my neighbourhood. Makes going for solo walks up into the woods nerve-racking. Luckily I have Dominic with me. Even though he's shorter than me, and way more nervous about cougars, his presence has the effect of making me feel brave (oh, what a chicken I am). So it's fun to shine our lights at rustles in the bushes and make growling noises (as opposed to running like hell through the dark bits).

In Which I Achieve A Goal Of Sorts

2012-01-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

We saw each other across a crowded room. There was a ray of sunshine glancing across the room, and it ended where the object of my desire was situated, against the wall. A Sign, I thought. It was, I knew, meant to be. We regarded each other carefully for a few moments: me, composing myself for what would be a Total Bodily Fling Across The Room; the object of my desire merely waiting, patiently. Objects of Desire like to do that.

Then we met. I fondled. I stroked. I even petted a bit (smooth! sleek!). A woman sidled up and looked at us over my shoulder. "They'll last you a lifetime AND they're 40% off," she murmured. ~~She knew a schmuck with a weak wallet when she saw one~~.

That was all I needed. Throwing caution fate and Richard's reaction to the wind, I made my decision. "I'll get them!" I said, "I've always wanted a pair!"

And so it was that I became the owner of a pair of Felco pruners.

How this glorious love affair came about:

The garden centre near me is closing up shop and moving to a new location. As is usual with these places, they are selling off everything in the store at a fairly steep discount. I managed to ignore the barrage of email reminders for about three weeks. Until this morning, when I received another email: "There's a great selection of quality long-handled tools at prices you won't see for the rest of the season" it said. Tools? That gave me pause. I love tools. And I love gardening tools best of all. So I made myself go. I got into the car and drove and parked and walked INto the shop. I had a mission - they had a sale. We were, if I say so myself, a match made in heaven.

I wasn't going to go at all, because one of my New Years resolutions is to work on paying off our mortgage before I am 80, but then I thought "I might be able to get a serious deal and then I would actually be SAVING, wouldn't I?"

(I'm nothing if not shrewd about my rationalizations)

And then I saw them: the Felco pruners. A much depleted row of them, but there was one that fit my hand.

So I bought them. I couldn't not, right? Who turns down the chance to buy the stuff of which pruning dreams are made?

Not I.

I bought some other things, too, but those pruners? Expect lots of gratuitous pruning shots in the next few weeks, as we get to know each other.

In Which We All Notice The Sunrise

2012-01-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

The sunrise was so beautiful we all noticed it at once. This, despite what you might think, is quite surprising given that we all have such different focuses in the morning.

One of us was busy getting ready for work, making his lunch, brushing his teeth, getting his watch and wallet ready. He noticed it out the bathroom window.
One of us was still lying in bed, groggy, feeling ever-so-slightly sorry for his hard scrabble life of having to get up before his internal time clock says he should. (a tragedy we note daily) He noticed it out of his bedroom window, which faces south east.
Two of us were just coming in the door at this time, having been outside watching the sunrise unfold. Today we were muffled up against the cold and watching for errant owls.
Finally, one of us was perched against the back door, bunny in arms, showing bunny the sunrise. As if bunnies didn't know such things existed.

"Mum! Get your camera!" she shouted, "you'll LOVE this sunrise!"

And I did.

These two photos were taken 7 seconds apart.
Good morning, where ever you are!

Hard & Bitter Agony

2012-01-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

I've been assured by a friend of mine who has a line on the future that this year is going to be a good one. I'm glad of that. Not that last year was a bad year for me, but it was, well, let's just say it was a sobering year for me. Not a year I'd like to repeat. I was reminded of my own mortality a little too harshly. I've had to - gasp - change things in my life to ensure my continuity. I know, call me a diva, but that's the way I am. Like I always say to my kids: I'm a slow learner.

This year is adding its own challenges, but I feel more confident about them, thankfully, which is nice because one of these new challenges is rather daunting.

I've taken on a new job. Not a paid job, I should emphasize, but it involves enough hours and skills that it SHOULD be a (highly) paid job. I'm taking on this job partly because of my kids and partly because the former occupant of this position is dying of pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis was 6 months ago and the terminus is "at any moment." When I last saw this person they were hale and hearty. They were having a really good hair day, too. They looked beautiful. Happy. I remember thinking "Why does ____ always have such EXCELLENT hair? I always look so raggedy!" And now this person is on the verge of moving on to another world, at the grand old age of forty one.

I feel highly annoyed. It's just not fair. This person is younger than I am. This person has kids - and a spouse. This person was vital to their community. This person shouldn't be dying like this, leaving behind such emotional devastation.

And even though I'm quite far from this person's circle of life I feel the impact. Why is it that good people die like this, while there are idiots out there doing all manner of stupid things, to themselves and their children, not to mention to complete strangers? I'm religious in my way, but not religious enough to take this sort of event terribly philosophically. It just doesn't seem fair.

So while I'm glad that this year is going to be a positive one, I'm also looking back, over my shoulder, with a bit of a narrowed eye. I felt a bit like this:

I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

Sturnidus vulgaris David Tennantius

2012-01-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

This morning I made a remark about starlings, a bird we have here on the West Coast in PLENTY. A bird I harbor much ill will towards. A bird I would prefer to banish from my feeders. Charming commenter Samantha remarked upon my post. What follows is our conversation further to this subject.

(Charming Commenter Samantha) No idea what a starling is.

(Sheila) Wait, you have NO idea at all what a starling is? Let me enlighten you: horrible piggy birds that eat everything and anything in one fell swoop. They travel in packs of a zillion. They intimidate other birds and shove them off the feeder, then swagger on and gulp it all down. They probably even laugh like Nelson whilst doing so (HAW HAW). They are the bully boys of the bird world.

This is a starling: note the puffed out "I'm so cool and speckly and you're not, har har har" stance.

(CCS) Well, I know it's some kind of a bird but it could land on my finger and sing me a little tune and ... then it would turn into DT (Doctor Who lingo for David Tennant) and I would totally not care about what kind of a bird it was, I would be more concerned about the man balancing on my finger singing. But since it's DT, I could totally handle it.

(S) You're right - if it were to turn into David Tennant I would probably revise my strategy towards starlings. Completely. I'd probably feed them and encourage them and sit out all night, waiting for them to come to the feeders in the morning. I might even shoo away the chickadees and the bushtits and the nuthatches and the pileated woodpeckers and the downy woodpeckers.

Yes, I suppose there really ARE two sides to every story...

New Year News

2012-01-08T08:47:00.001-08:00

I am happy to report that my side of the bedroom remains clear and uncluttered. As for FDPG's bedroom, well, let's just say I'm not buying any giant chocolate bars any time soon.

What about SuperLogic Man? Well, we'll say he's working on that one...

And looky here at what I've managed to do: it's called a Foil The Starlings feeder. An ice cream tub, upside down, with a metal suet feeder jammed inside. I've wired the metal feeder so it can be pulled out for refilling, but otherwise it seems to have genuinely foiled the starlings.

If you like and feed starlings or simply want me to feel a modicum of compassion for them I will preempt you and say you're wasting your breath. I don't like starlings and even if one rescued me from a burning building I'd still find them objectionable.

Piggy bullies, that's what I think about starlings.

(Gosh, Sheila, don't hold back or anything.)

I won't.

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

My resolutions:

1) To keep my side of the bedroom clean(er). This resolution came about after I overheard the twins comparing my room with FDPG's room.

"My room is nowhere near as messy as Mum's!" (FDPG, indignant)

"It is too. You and Mum pile stuff everywhere and you each have clothes all over the place. It's sort of gross. If it weren't for Dad's side of the room, Mum's room would be a MESS. I can hardly walk around on her side of the room." (Dominic, sounding revolted)

"Oh, you can say THAT again. Have you seen those magazine piles? Yuck." (FDPG, eye-rolling sounds in her voice)

2) To keep up my morning and afternoon walking regime. Even when it's raining cats and dogs out. Even when it's pre-dawn dark and wet and cold out. Blech. Sounds awful, put that way. Must find a more pleasant way to look at the pre-dawn dark and wet and cold...

3) To stop incurring library fines. The librarians all laugh and rub their hands with glee when I walk in, in ALL the branches. I've resorted to taping nice notes on my overdue books before I pop them into the slots, because it's the only way I can beg for clemency without having to endure their eye-rolling and arched eyebrows. Sigh.

FDPG's resolution:

To keep her room tidier. If she can do this for 60 days I have agreed to present her with a large bar of chocolate, because there's nothing FDPG loves more than chocolate. But her room is a poster child for the HGTV reality television show: Pigsties!

Dominic's resolution:

"Why do I have to make a resolution? I don't have anything I need to change about myself. I'm perfect as I am. Well, I suppose I could resolve to play more with LEGO. Or eat more candy. Or do less work around the house - what do you mean, I hardly do any house work as it is? I do plenty. (Ed's note: he does not) No, YOU should make some resolutions, Mum, especially your room. Have you seen MY room lately? Pretty clean eh? Maybe you could...hey, wait, why are you pushing me out of the room? Oi!"

Max's Resolution:

To be super logical (because he is often accused of being ~~wildly crazily~~ illogical).

Sounds like a super hero in the making, don't you think?

Hello, puny humans, I am SuperLogical Man!

We'll see how that one goes.

Christmas Redux

2012-01-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

File this one in the Crafts I'll Keep section. A lot of Christmas crafts, heck, a lot of crafts period, are fun in the making but end up either in the compost or in the recycling bin (note that I did not use the words garish, ugly, or full of junk at any point).

This one I can see staying until it fades. We made them in a few different colours: red, pink, blue. Charming things.

All I'll say about this photo is that it is amazing how much food the teen-age boy can consume. I even heard the sentence "If I wait a bit I'll be able to eat more" come out of someone's mouth. Boggles the mind a bit, doesn't it?

Here are the Webkinz waiting for Santa. They were slightly concerned about the fire and the chimney and Santa coming down the chimney, but we assured them that Santa and his magic pants have long since figured out mundane things like getting around fires in fireplaces.

And yes, this IS the fireplace they use for the Burning Log channel.

The Angry Birds also waited for Santa, but they don't look as though they had such a great time, do they? They always look so, well, so angry.

As you can see, they all received lovely handmade hats for Christmas. That FDPG, she's not only crafty and fearless in the face of such terrible tempers, she's also generous and thoughtful.

Food loomed large this Christmas. We made chocolates and cakes and fizzy punches with herbal syrups and Christmas fruit breads and cacao nib espresso cookies. We roasted things, discovered fresh mozzarella, caramelized things and developed exceptional pizza crusts. Luckily we also went on a lot of long walks, so the fruits of our labours aren't straining the waistlines of our pants...
Jamie Oliver is a huge favourite in this house, so when we had the opportunity to see his Christmas With Bells On series we leapt at it. My kids have loved him ever since they watched him hold a potato in the air in front of a group of elementary kids and say "This is where your chips come from!" while the school kids goggled in disbelief. And I can't count the number of times Dominic has told people (sometimes the same ones over and over again) how Jamie actually BURIED a deep fryer in someone's back yard. Yes, the glee his antics inspire in my kids is rather alarming. Anyhow, he also inspired us to make the dessert you see here. It's called a semifreddo. I know, I know, it looks like a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows, but it's actually a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows with SNICKERS bars. The recipe calls for more Snickers bars than I had on hand — I only had 5 fun size Snickers bars (how this size is fun I'll never know) left over from Halloween — so I improvised a bit, using the chocolate sauce from Max's DIY sundae party and some miniature marshmallows.
Here's the semifreddo before it went in the freezer. I didn't have the fellow dressed as a turkey to fling whipping cream around but I managed to get some on the floor nevertheless. And we didn't have the teeny tiny cones Jamie used, but it sure was good.

Finally, every time I ate a Christmas clementine, I was faced with these words: Win A College Education. I don't know about you, but there is something dreadfully disconcerting about seeing this sentence on one's Christmas orange. I felt affronted anew each time, even though they were remarkably good clementines.

How Does It Feel To Be Fifteen?

2011-12-27T11:43:00.000-08:00

No sooner do we get Christmas over with in this house than we must start thinking about a certain eldest child's birthday. We move from Christmas wrap and Christmas tags to birthday wrap and birthday tags in one fell swoop. I know it's very unMartha-ish of me to say it, let alone DO it, but often the birthday wrapping paper around here IS Christmas wrap.

Fortunately this year I can thank Rampant Commercial Consumerism (in the guise of a car advert that ran simultaneously on television and newsprint) for providing me with some fairly glitzy vehicle wrapping paper. They slipped a whole sheet of the stuff inside the newspaper right before Christmas. It's actually quite nice wrap, too.

This year marks a new direction in the Birthday Cake Department. Since I am Chief Designer I get a lot of weird orders. Some suggestion I nix right off the bat (LEGO men that stand, anything over 18", too much black icing) and some I have to guide in slightly less sugary directions, but for the most part the kids can choose any kind of cake they want. I've made cakes that look like ferries, cakes that look like LEGO bricks, cakes with trains on them, and even cakes that look like Totoro, Oms (Miyazaki's Nausicaa) or hamburgers.

This year my instructions were to make a tall cake. A very tall cake. A cake at least two feet high. Which, if you are a careful reader, you will have noted is a direct contravening of the rules (no cake over 18"). That rule is there for a reason. Actually, three reasons:

1) the inside pieces totally lose out when it comes to icing.

2) the Chief Designer doesn't like to do dowels or supports on cakes. A cake over 12" high will require dowels or supports.

3) I don't have a knife that will cut a 24" cake. And I'm not sure I want to have one.

This year, instead of a 24" cake, I convinced the birthday boy to go for a DIY sundae, because it would combine brownies, ice cream, marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate, butterscotch, and strawberry sauces, and lots of candy in one go. I even took him to the bulk store and let him pick the candy. Well, perhaps pick is not the operative word...let's just say that I guided his hand fairly firmly past the Lindt Christmas truffles and towards the M&Ms and gummies. I'm what I like to call Cheaply Benevolent.

Happily, it all worked out. Right now the birthday boy and his pals are - there's no other word for it - gorging themselves on their creations. There's lots of laughter, choking, dribbles, spills, crunching, and jostling - a perfect mix if you're a teen-age boy.

How does it feel to be fifteen? I don't remember, but I liked the answer one of his friends had:

"I don't know! How does it feel to be 40?" (much laughter ensues)

Such a wit.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T11:40:00.000-08:00

If you've seen the December cover of the MSL magazine, you'll know what's going on here; if you haven't, well, you won't know what the heck is going on here. Never mind, go have some more eggnog.

Happy Christmas from all of us here at Greenridge Chronicles, including Angry Bird.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T06:04:00.000-08:00

I wake up in the dark, with the cat licking my hand and purring in the way he does. His purr sounds like he had a particularly bad case of pneumonia when he was a kitten; it's crackly and uneven and wheezy. If he were one of the kids I'd be inclined to say "get a drink of water for heaven's sakes.." or worry about incipient bronchitis, but since he's a slightly neurotic cat I thump his tummy instead, hoping to get him to shift a little and lower the decibels.

He doesn't. Instead he crawls up the bed until he's lying right in my face, which means his butt is right in Richard's face. He purrs louder, rumbling like a poorly maintained dump truck. Richard is sleeping so he doesn't know that Toffee's bottom is in his face, but the idea of it, combined with his usual reaction when Toffee does this ("Toffee, I do not find the sight of your anal glands very attractive"), causes me to start giggling. Toffee is pleased and starts licking my shoulder vigorously. Together we manage to wake Richard up. Richard is not pleased. He does not find Toffee's early morning wheeze amusing.

It is Christmas Eve. And this is the start of my day.

I don't know what Christmas is like where you live, but where I live Christmas is a big deal: stores close early on Christmas Eve, with signs posted that say things like "Our staff is having a Christmas party this afternoon so we're closing early! We reopen December 27th. Have a Merry Christmas!" Yes, you read that right - things actually shut down for more than a day. When I first moved back here from six years in California I remember feeling quite indignant ("What? I have to think ahead about how much milk I have in the fridge? How LAME is that!"), but the feeling gradually wore off. Canada is quietly and fiercely proud of its parochialism, and six years in the heady wilds of pre-recession California made me forget briefly that I was, for better or for worse, not an American.

We have spent much of the week on our usual Christmas pursuits: making things that smell good, baking things that taste good, crafting things that look good, and getting together, for better or for worse, with relatives and friends. Some of these get togethers are pleasant and we all look forward to them; some we simply endure, like we do the flu, hoping they will end swiftly and without too much trauma. This last instance is why we now have a Post-it note stuck to the answering machine, with various telephone numbers written on it; this is my version of the Do Not Answer list.

"It's _____!" shrieks FDPG (who lives to patrol the telephone) "Do I answer it?"

"NO!!!!" I shriek back, fear and horror gripping my heart like cold death.

Sigh. Christmas.

The Countdown Has Officially Begun

2011-12-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

The excitement of Christmas is progressing here - to the point that even the LEGO men are running around doing silly things. Whoever heard of skiing on wooden tabletops?

Only 5 days until Christmas! Whoo hooo!

Wacky Christmas Gift Ideas

2011-12-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

Look, it's a K-Tel sunset!

That's what I think every time I see a shaft of sunlight piercing the sky, particularly if it's early morning shafts or end of the day shafts. They have an unearthly radiance about them that screams I AM GOD LOOK AT ME. In a nice way, of course (I always picture God as a kindly old man with nice manners). I realize this sounds weird, but there it is. Every time I think: "that looks like a religious record cover."

Everyone seems to be blogging about their favourite gift ideas right now, and as I was trying to ~~pilfer some ideas~~ get inspiration I came across some, well, I'll use the politest word I can - odd ideas. First off, this came in my Twelve Days of Cookies email from the American Food Network (you can sign up for it here). Every day I get a Christmas cookie recipe from a famous TV cook. The recipes have names like Throw Down Blondies and Paula's Snowflakes and they all seem to involve triple amounts of everything. While I've never actually made any of these cookies I can't seem to resist reading about them. There is something rather compelling about all that excess.

Anyhow, I noticed in one of the sidebars that someone named Bobby Deen had a recipe up for Double Chocolate-Walnut Meringue Cookies. While my first thought was that any adult with the name Bobby Deen should really be singing religious tunes instead of baking (with my photo as his album cover) I couldn't help but be ever so slightly scandalized that he called his items meringue cookies when anyone could see that they were macarons. As in French macarons - more specifically Parisian macarons. Google the word - and if you see a hit from Ladurée click on it. Oh heck, let me make it easier...click on this link here. See what I mean? It's not a meringue cookie, it's a macaron, although in a pinch I will accept the term macaroon; I don't want to give the idea that I am a zealot about this, but this recipe makes me bristle with indignation. If we're not careful they'll be doing things like changing the name of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone to something like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Oh wait, they already did.

Next up: Fruit necklaces: $35 each. Someone has taken slices of real fruit (in this case a starfruit) and dipped them in glitter resin. These are part of the Holiday Gifts Under $50 series. I don't know about you, but wearing a piece of dried fruit around my neck sounds weird. I worry slightly that a bird might come and start pecking at me, or that someone will mistake me for a weird survivalist who carries emergency rations around with them.

Mr & Mrs Muse salt and pepper shakers: For the person unclear on the concept of the muse, evidently, because instead of a statue of a naked Greek goddess or two, this set consists of two smooth white heads, one moustachioed (evidently the Mr.) and one with lips (and the Mrs.) They will, we are told, keep our table "fun" and "playful." It's also $48. Hmmm. I don't know about you, but this screams fun and playful to me. Not.

Here's another in the Bad Idea File: Word Appetizer Dishes. "If you are what you eat" the ad announces, "then you should act how you serve." So, for $25, you too can act SHARE, LAUGH, and PARTY. Just don't ask me how to accomplish this. The idea of having serving dishes that say things like PARTY worries me somewhat. I am uncomfortably reminded of those wooden signs several of my outlying relatives have sitting on their cupboards, signs announcing things like FAMILY and LAUGHTER and LOVE LIVES HERE. I would, I can confidently say, visibly cringe if anyone bought me either these dishes or one of those wooden signs. Some of us thrive on cheese, some of thrive on irony. Give me irony every time.

Finally (I can only handle so much distressing consumerism at a time), there is the 3-in-1 Breakfast Maker. Yes, Gentle Reader, such a thing really does exist. It's here. It will make coffee, toast and fry and egg, all in one handy, space-saving unit. It's cheap and it looks it: $43.99. Gosh, can we elevate the art of cooking any higher? Given this object, I think not.

Now, I have to go. In the time it took to write this I have another Food Network cookie email, and I really must check it out.

Shades of Life

2011-12-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

I was lying in bed this morning, trying to decide whether I really wanted to get up and go to the bathroom, braving the cold of the morning and more than likely waking myself up enough to prevent a return to sleep, but instead turned on my little bedside radio and put the headphones on, hoping that NPR's Morning Edition would distract me sufficiently.

Then this came on: This NOT Just In: Mourning John Lennon.

Which did two things: drove all bathroom thoughts from my mind AND woke me up. Funny how these things happen.

Where were you when John Lennon died? Do you remember? Were you even born yet? I was. I was in Guatemala, adventuring as only the young and truly clueless can; the fact that I might need to learn another language to traverse South America only struck me when I crossed the border into Mexico and realized that I didn't understand anyone. For a brief moment I wondered whether the words TACO, SERAPE, and SOMBRERO, along with a lot of hand waving and facial expressions, might be enough to propel me around South America. I was a fan of Italian films and they always seemed to manage on few words and a lot of drama, surely I could too? This thought lasted about, ooohh, maybe three weeks before I realized that I needed more words and less gestures.

So there I was, four months later, working in a vegetarian restaurant as a cook, a fact which still mildly astounds me, given that until that month I hadn't ever cooked anything more than toast. I think I must have radiated a certain culinary confidence though, because I was also Head Cook. The fact that the owner of the restaurant spent all his time out backing smoking pot might have had something to do with my position: not only was he even more clueless than I was, he also operated on the premise that, because I could read The Vegetarian Epicure in the original English, I must be able to cook.

At this point I feel I should do a Burl Ives snowman shrug and say something like "Ah, youth."

This situation lasted about three weeks, then, one night, when I was walking down the main drag of the little town where the restaurant was (a hot spot on the Gringo Trail), contemplating the curious fact that every restaurant seemed to serve exactly the same menu: omelettes and fresh fruit, when I heard a tinny little radio playing Across the Universe. Until that point I knew who the Beatles were, but I wasn't a knowledgable fan. We were separated by a bit of a generation gulf. They were my brother's music. I liked the John and Yoko pairing, and in fact I still think Let Me Count The Ways is one of the more beautiful songs I know, but I didn't know much Beatles music. But there was that radio, playing that song. In a Twitterless, Facebookless world: news spread by (untyped) word of mouth back then. Soon all the gringo tourists were standing in the middle of the street, shocked at the news that John Lennon had been shot and was dead. I think I heard Across The Universe at least a hundred times that week, it was in constant rotation on all the radio stations.

So that's where I was when John Lennon was shot: growing up in Central America. I still remember it clearly all these years later.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe

Winter Skies & Christmas Books

2011-12-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

Doesn't this picture —

— remind you of this author's work?

It does me (it's also a lovely inspiring Christmas read).

The Hunt Is On!

2011-12-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Haggis Hunt, that is. More specifically: Farquhar's Revenge. Plenty more haggi where that came from!

Who Doesn't Need A Beak Warmer?

2011-12-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

Just the thing for the Angry Bird on your Christmas list!

A Not So Dark Horse

2011-12-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

If you're familiar with the film Love Actually you might know something of the obsession that afflicts Britain this time each year: the coveted place wherein a musical single, usually performed by some good-looking youthful quartet, tops the charts at Christmas time. Playing an aging rock star intent on a comeback of sorts, Bill Nighy muses, in one of the more sublime moments of the film, during a radio interview, "Wouldn't it be great if number one this Christmas wasn't some smug teenager but an old ex-heroin addict searching for a comeback at any price?" Wonder of wonders (spoilers!), he achieves his Christmas number one, in spite of himself.

This Christmas another group is attempting much the same sort of takeover for the Christmas spot: the Military Wives choir. If you've seen this series you will know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well, you've missed some seriously brilliant television and I advise you to get yourself to it immediately. I'm a fervently devoted fan of Gareth Malone, the boyish choirmaster who likes to take on decidedly unmusical situations, so when I saw his latest series - The Choir: Military Wives - I watched with some interest. It was every bit as riveting as his other efforts; there is something charming about a man who believes, in this age of endless tweeting and too-much-information-via-Facebook, that the simple act of singing can change people's lives for the better.

This single was compiled from snippets of the letters to and from these military wives, women whose husbands were largely in Afghanistan, and put to music. They performed it in November at the Royal Albert Hall, then recorded it professionally in a studio, as you can see yourself in this YouTube clip. If you're as soppy as me, you'll need at least one kleenex. Then make a little wish that this group can get their number one single this Christmas, just like Billy did on Love Actually.

You Know What They Say—

2011-12-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

When life hands you lemons, make marmalade out of them.

(I like to twist up these sayings a bit)

Here lie the fruits of my 2 year old lemon trees, along with a couple of sour mandarins from the sour mandarin tree I acquired in the summer. There were enough lemons to make 5 pints of marmalade. If you come to visit I'll be happy to dispense toast and marmalade.

Eating LEGO

2011-11-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

Our neighbours across the street put up their Christmas lights today, which prompted my kids to exclaim about our lack of Christmas lights. We have a few advent things inside: an advent candle wreath on the table, the Mary's Walk tableau on the seasonal table, a few paper toys from here (from her book, actually) scattered around the living room. No lights yet. It seems too early.

I bought the chocolate-windowed advent calendars my kids love yesterday, but only when I found them for less than $1.25 each. I toyed with the idea of buying them each LEGO City advent calendar, if only to give my kids a fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime never-to-be-repeated moment to reflect back on when they're older (and I'm either dead or rotting in a home somewhere wondering if they're thinking about me) and they're reflecting (hopefully) fondly on their childhood. "Gosh," they'll think, "Mum was amazing! I loved that calendar."

Sadly for my LEGO-loving kids, I only toyed with the idea. Picture me: a (LEGO-sponsored) devil on one shoulder, whispering "$40 is nothing! Think of how excited they'll be!" while on the other shoulder a prim angel stands, arms folded, tapping one foot impatiently, saying "Ohmygawd, another idiot has lost its village, hasn't it? Sheila, my dear, those kids of yours have enough damn LEGO to sink a couple of planets. Get them each one of those cheap chocolate things and get the hell home. And stop listening to that turkey on your other shoulder. You always were a pushover."

Fortunately I listened to my well-honed guilt complex and rescued our bank account from almost certain death. Cheap chocolate it was. The twins were thrilled with theirs. Max will do what he did last year: pretend he's too cool to have an advent calendar and let it languish in a corner until Christmas morning, whereupon he will pull it out, pretending he has just remembered it, and promptly eat all the chocolates in one go while the twins watch enviously, wishing they had the willpower to do the same.

Can't do that with LEGO.

Reading Aloud : November

2011-11-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

I've written before on reading aloud to my kids. It started as a fluke event then morphed into a Thing We Do. I used to read aloud at night, before bed, but the pleas for 'one more chapter' became a wrench, because sometimes it was ME who wanted the one more chapter. Also, when the book was on the, err, dramatic side I hesitated to read it right before bed, because some of us had night terrors. Black riders and blazing eyes in towers don't always go down well in dreamland.

Then I started reading in the mornings, while we were all still soft and malleable from our nighttime dreams. This is a good state for one's audience to be in; it's highly forgiving, particularly if one likes to experiment with thick Scottish brogues or there are songs or poems to be sung within the storyline. That time period clicked, because we could read for more than thirty minutes without the repercussions a lack of sleep invokes. Thus, every weekday morning for the past seven years I have read aloud at breakfast time. We've ploughed through a lot of books this way: books I wanted them to read; books they would never have read on their own; books that were above their reading level; and books that I wanted to read myself. One day in the future, when the kids are long out of the house and I'm tottering around here on my own, wondering how it got so quiet (and clean) all of a sudden, it will be what I recall the most clearly and miss the mostly deeply.

How do I choose a book to read aloud? I have three usual methods:

1) The book is something I read and loved as a kid. This works if you were a passionate reader or if you grew up with a passionate reader (presuming you paid attention to the passionate reader's choices, that is).

2) The book has a Newbery Award imprint on the cover and is languishing cheaply on the shelves at our local Sally Ann. This is probably my number one method of finding books. Someone in my neighbourhood bought a lot of good books for their children, for which I am thankful. Now if only I could find someone in my neighbourhood who would pass on their Williams-Sonoma cast-offs...

3) I've heard about it from someone, or FDPG has heard about it from somewhere and has recalled it for us to read. FDPG has the library collection data base on speed-dial. Kidding? Me?

Another method I am leery of mentioning, because it's not terribly reliable, is using Amazon as a search function: look up a book you know and like, then see what the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" has to say for itself.

Anyhow, Method No. 2 is how we got ourselves onto the James Herriot omnibus this month. I'm 479 pages into the book and we're all just as delighted with it now as we were on page 12. I don't remember being as struck by his prose style when I was a kid, reading it under the covers at night, wanting desperately to be a vet when I grew up, but reading it aloud now it's hard not to notice it. Every word counts in his stories. Not a single note is wasted. Then there's his comic skill; he's a very funny man who is able to tell stories so that the reader can see the humour just as clearly as the writer. At this point I feel quite confident in saying that my kids worship the ground Tristan walks on. Every puff of Woodbine smoke, every pint of beer, every hangover or silly antic, they love it all. He's probably going to down in our pantheon of Dearly Beloved Characters, right alongside Laura Ingalls, Frodo, Harry, Ron, & Hermione, Chrestomanci, Wol & Weeps, White Fang, Howl, John, Susan, Titty & Roger, and the entire Durrell family. But I think what I love most about this series is the resilient attitude the author has about the fact that he had to spend a good deal of his time in very uncomfortable situations: his car has no heat, he has to go out at all hours, he often works in inhospitable surroundings, with recalcitrant patients, and in unforgiving weather. And through it all he has the best of attitudes. These kinds of books are sneaky: they can't help but provide a contrast for my kids about how easy and cosy their own lives are in comparison, but they also show them another, more valuable lesson: life is what you make of it. I like that kind of lesson in a book.

For more on the topic of Read Alouds, click on the "Little House" or "Book Reviews" link on the left hand column of my blog, under Labels.

Puffballs & Japanese Snow

2011-11-17T13:08:00.000-08:00

Meet the Lion Sisters, the latest additions to the Greenridge Household.

This one is Puff, or Her Royal Puffness. She's very gregarious and curious, which is good considering that her new owner is a fairly lively boy.

Full Frontal: Puff has black ears, nose, and feet, while the rest of her is one big poof of gray.

This is Yuki. I haven't been able to get a good shot of her, so this one will have to do. She's quite tiny. Yesterday we were worried she was shy or perhaps even ill because she was so quiet and still, but today she perked up and attacked her crust of bread relatively aggressively, considering it was almost as big as she is.

In Which We Encounter A Moment From A Book

2011-11-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we were sitting in a dentist's office, while one of us had some sealants put on our ridges and buckles. One of us has weird, convoluted teeth.

As we sat, some of us played Angry Birds on iPods, and some of us read a book we'd just picked up from the bookstore that morning. A book about bats. We'd seen the author at the library in the summertime, and he was such a charismatic and inspiring speaker we all wanted to read his books immediately. Max had already encountered this series, but FDPG hadn't, so with her characteristic competence she searched the library catalogue until she'd located the first four, then read them one by one, over a period of about three weeks. That FDPG, she doesn't mess around. From morning till night her nose was in a book. From morning till night she talked about these books.

Then Dominic decided he might like to read them. Dominic came later to reading than did FDPG, and we had to work on it for a bit via conventional phonics methods, but for the past two years he's been catching up to his twin, slightly slower but doggedly working his way through many of the same books. But where FDPG lives for dragon fantasies, magical creatures stories, and books like The Lord of the Rings, Dominic likes animal tales and adventure stories: Rudyard Kipling, Farley Mowat, and Jack London. He also likes bats, so I tried to entice him with this bat series. For whatever reason he never took the bait. I think the sheer size of the print intimidated him. Then a couple of weeks ago he started reading one of them - Darkwing. He also asked me to recall the first one - Silverwing - from the library, but when it arrived the print was depressingly tiny. It was a book for someone with a magnifying glass. So we went to the bookstore and bought a different version with larger print.

So there we were in the dentist's office, me reading Silverwing and the others absorbed with Angry Birds. I read the first seventy five pages before we were done with the dentist.

Today we were on our early morning walk, Dominic and I; it was just after seven o'clock on a cloudy, overcast day. There is something wonderful about the first light of day: if it's clear you see the stars and planets setting in the lightening sky; if it's cold you see the frost glinting on the bridge; if it's raining you see the birds huddled under the dripping branches. And it's so very quiet and still at that time of the day.

We were just walking down the hill to the house when a bird burst excitedly out of a Garry oak across the road from our house and whizzed past us into another thicket of trees. The noise it was making was startling; but what was even more startling was the owl chasing it intently across the road. Big and gray and deadly silent, it sailed within six feet of our heads, eyes swiveling over us impassively for a second or two before disappearing into the same thicket as the panicked starling. It all happened in seconds.

Dominic and I looked at each other. We were both thinking the same thing: the owls were out, keeping the law. We glanced into the sky, looking for a bat or two, but there were none. Dawn had already broken.

You can read more about the series we are reading here.

School Projects

2011-11-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest in the Stormavenger oeuvre: it was part of a project he did for a class he's in.

A small glimpse into what makes Max tick:

Making Things

2011-11-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

Did I write about renovating the downstairs bathroom? The one Max was so repelled by he groaned and grouched about it hourly? The one room we didn't renovate when we bought this house five years ago? The only room that really showed its, err, age?

Wait, I did. Here. It wasn't a particularly ugly bathroom, but it was dated: plywood sink vanity with cheap melamine, ancient creaking taps with mould growing under the caps, bad wallpaper, and a shower stall that was unusable because, and I kid you not, it did not attach to the wall. We didn't notice it when we'd viewed the house, which was probably lucky, because by the time we noticed we'd already leapt into the house hook, line, and mortgage. At that point we were stuck with it.
So the kids took turns each day cleaning and grouching about the cleaning. We'd renovated the upstairs bathroom before moving in and our resident Shower King became so possessive about this new shower (not to mention the bathroom) that after a few years I threw down the Renovation Gauntlet to Richard: either we redo the downstairs bathroom or I go mad watching everyone but me use my bathroom.

Fortunately Richard is nothing if not a careful listener. And he knows when his (not very) long-suffering wife has reached a breaking point.
So we renovated. If Richard and I were an HGTV home design show duo, I'd be the Design Guy and he'd be the Tool Guy: I pick the tiles, the paint, and the fixtures while Richard does all the hard stuff like jackhammering and dealing with electrics and drains. I'm not so good with drains. But I am good at dragging logs off the beach so my dad can chainsaw them in half and Richard can stick them on the wall with embedded hooks for the kids' towels. Although, umm, I didn't actually drag the log off the beach...Max did. I chose it though.

Now the downstairs bathroom is so pristine and new I keep mistaking it for a hotel bathroom. And the Shower King keeps it so clean that we're all quite astounded. When he's not in the shower, that is.

He likes the shower, that boy.

I'm slowly adding little design touches to the room. Like this little sea glass and shell mobile. I collect these things during the summer when we go up island. We bring home little cartons of sand dollars, clam shells, moon snail shells, and driftwood. White rocks. Spotted rocks. Flat rocks. Some go to the garden. Some line the paths. Others sit on the front porch. Every so often Richard will say things like "That stuff is cluttering up the basement/carport/back deck/bedroom/living room. Are you EVER going to do anything with it? Or will it just sit here for the next 25 years?" or "How long is that box of driftwood going to sit in the carport?" or sometimes even "You are a packrat, you know."

Fortunately I am very good at tuning these rude remarks out. Because every so often I actually do something with all that stuff.

Seeing How The Star Wheel Turns

2011-11-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lunch series - something rather dramatic reared its rather, err, dramatic head into our lives and disrupted lunch posts, as well as a lot of other things, for the time being. The dust is slowly (and hopefully) settling.

One of the side effects of all this drama is a new regime: early morning walks. Not surprisingly, this doesn't attract a lot of takers, being so early any all. Nonetheless, two of us forge out into the morning's mists before the dawn has struck, flashlights in hand. We walk so briskly we can barely keep a conversation going. It's pitch black out (thus the flashlights). It's cold and sometimes frosty too, which means a clear view of the stars. We note the shapes and patterns and brightnesses, and when we get home we check the starwheel and the almanac to see what we were walking under. It's the best sort of star lesson there is, really. Even if it is dark and cold and — early.

And We Shall See What Can't Be Seen

2011-11-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

On any other night...

The ghosts of paper bag lunches past, lining the stairs, lit by the happy memories of many a toothsome lunch. (I see someone spilled their wax, ahem)

More glowing ghosts, this time the ghosts of milk cartons past. Glug glug glug...
And here we have a knight from the twelfth century, a noble Crusader preparing to go riding in the dark, accompanied by his trusty mummy. And no, thank you very much, she is NOT a zombie, she is a genuine grade A Egyptian mummy. Some of our neighbours need to bone up on their undead/dead classification lore.

One two! One two! and through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker snack!

He left it dead and with its head

He went galumphing back.

LEGO Kits We'd Like To See

2011-10-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Those wacky twins have been at it again. Here's another in the series of kits we'd like to see in the next LEGO catalogue:

City
Houseboat
Item #: 1068
Ages: 5-12
Pieces: 275

This kit comes complete with a sailor, spyglass, fishing rod, and a fully stocked kitchen. Deck canopy protects against the elements while the sailor protects against fierce sea action.

Creator
Fish Bar
Item #: 7563
Ages: 5-12
Pieces: 525

This little fish shop has a menu board, an outdoor heat lamp, a light-up stove, and a skookum little get away craft moored right out front. It even has a diving board!

Technic
Mars Roving Robot
Item #: 6932
Ages: 9-16
Pieces: 274

This little robot can go up some pretty steep cliffs (was tested on van windscreens) so there's no worries about getting stuck in the red dust. Comes complete with a remote in case your astrosuit isn't ready in time for blast-off.

MiniSet
Miniature Train
Item #: 6525
Ages: 4-12
Pieces: 42

This little locomotive is a dead ringer for the Hogwarts Express, and indeed was modelled on it. Comes in red with black detailing, wheels optional.

Alien Conquest
ADU (Alien Defense Unit)
Item #: 7892
Ages: 6-12
Pieces: 396

Have aliens in your city? Get the ADU over for some fun and games! Blast them out of town with the roof-mounted rocket launcher or run over them with your low riding wheels. No danger of being harmed in this encased monster of a vehicle. ER assistance not included.

Creator
Graveyard Church
Item #: 4319
Ages: 7-14
Pieces: 478

This LEGO church comes with something you don't see very often in LEGO: stained glass windows! Sit down in the pews and experience a genuine LEGO service (host & choir optional).

Then, go outside and watch the grumpy caretaker sweep up the body parts from Halloween.

Well, wouldn't YOU be grumpy if you had to sweep up a lot of body parts and mummy limbs every morning?

"Stupid #@&*% zombies. I wish they'd go somewhere else, so I could get on pretending to be Harry Potter."

Bedtime Stories

2011-10-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

There I was, lying in bed, intently watching another gripping episode of Monarchy on my iPod. What better way to unwind at night than to watch someone at least 30 years older than you work like a dog? Even better, work like a dog while dripping with jewels and surrounded by glorious room decor? I find it strangely relaxing.

I was deeply absorbed in a particularly complex explanation of Black Rod when Richard came into the room, brushing his teeth noisily. He peered over and a wave of spearmint fumes hit me. He stared at the screen solicitously. I had earplugs (oops, sorry technologically superior teen child - earbuds) on, so he couldn't hear the commentary, but Prince Charles was shaking hands with someone and grimacing in the way only Prince Charles can. Without concern for any future Black Rod knowledge I may or may not have been stashing away for later (Jeopardy battles being rife around these parts), he launched into his usual nightly behaviour. This generally involves bouncing into bed noisily and interrupting me cheerily while he decides which book to read from the tottering pile at his bedside. Sometimes he brandishes the cover of each book so I can be privy to his inner deliberations (I tell him to pick the nice yellow book). Sometimes the pile falls over (clouds of dust ensue). Sometimes he yanks the covers about if he thinks I'm hogging the duvet (we wrangle pleasantly about who has more blanket). Sometimes he launches into a discussion about the complexities of the tile cutting saw he saw in the Canadian Tire catalogue (I remind him he already has a tile cutting saw). Every now and then he madly leaps up and races around the house, remembering doors to lock or bread to remove from freezers (I remind him that the kids are - or WERE - asleep). Once he's chosen his book and his page he clicks off. Abruptly.

After this evening's performance was over, I returned to my Monarchy viewing. We read and watch for a while. I am just getting into a particularly tense scene involving an irritated Queen and a number of sheepish looking Corgis when Richard blurts out of nowhere:

"Think he'll ever be King?"

"Huh? Who?"

"Prince Charles. Think the Queen will outlive him? Throne pass to Wills?"

"What? Are you kidding? She won't outlive him! Poor Charles."

"It's happened before. It's not unthinkable. There IS precedent."

"What? When has it happened before?" (the Corgis are forgotten)

"The Black Prince. His father outlived him. Throne passed on to Richard II."

"Who? The Black Prince? What? When was this? Recently?" (in spite of myself I am starting to screech a bit)

"Fourteenth century."

I burst out laughing.

"Oh my GAWD! That's only 700 years ago. Practically yesterday! I'm sure it's something that weighs heavily on Charles' mind. The Black Prince. You are INSANE." (I roll about in the pillows, feeling quite hysterical at this point)

Richard smiles smugly. "Don't laugh. It IS a precedent. I'm sure the Queen knows about it."

For some reason this strikes me as both wildly improbably AND hysterically funny. Richard goes back to his book, with a rather knowing look on his face. I return to my iPod. The Queen is traipsing up a very long staircase in a white evening gown, looking barely out of breath. Camera shifts to Prince Charles, looking red faced and rather less robust than his mother. I peer at his face on the tiny screen, wondering.

I glance over at Richard. He smirks.

Mountain View Mystery

2011-10-19T09:13:00.001-07:00

Come in, Mountain View, CA. Who are you? I have to say, at this point I am curious.

Consider The Lunch 2

2011-10-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Edition:

Okay, this one was a bit of a quickie, I admit. We had next to nothing in the house and I didn't feel like cooking anything, so I hauled out the last of the graham crackers and grabbed a few apples, chocolate chips, and dried cherries. Then I used the mini bowl on my immersion blender to purée peanut butter, bananas, and a little Golden Syrup (takes the edge off the banana for the kid who isn't nuts about bananas). Spread, chop, arrange. That mini bowl is a miracle, I tell you. It's my own personal Almost A Vitamix.

Not shown: mango smoothie. Mango juice, ice cubes, over-ripe frozen bananas in a blender.

Rating: Very good (didn't fill the teen amongst us up and required some messy grazing afterwards, which was horribly tragic, but it WAS quick and easy)

Later that afternoon I went to the store and stocked up a bit. Ahem.

And Then There's Lunch

2011-10-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but making lunch in-house 5 days a week can be tedious, particularly if I've spent the morning assisting with math (grade 5 level), assisting with math (grade 9 level), talking about history, the periodic table, geometry, grammar and maybe even a little poetry.

I walk into the kitchen, most days around 11:30, look around and think "ugh." Or "why don't I have a personal chef?" Sometimes I even do an "uh-oh" depending on what's in the fridge or cupboards. Sometimes I walk back into the family room (where we do our schoolwork) and think "I'd rather be here. I wonder if anyone will forget about lunch?" knowing in my heart that no one will. Well, except for me.

There's something about the regularity of lunch that can be very creativity-destroying, don't you think? I have lots of ideas, but some days I lack the enthusiasm (not to mention the ingredients AND a flagrant budget). And don't forget the Taste Bud Considerations to, well, um, consider. Some of us adore sushi, some of us don't. Some of us love soup, some of us think it should be served no more than once a month, if that. Some of us like odd foods and exotic flavours, some of us would prefer a Heart Un-healthy diet (fries, cured meat subs, hamburgers).

So I'm going to start something new here on this blog:

Consider The Lunch.

I'm going to detail what we have for lunch for a week or two, which should, all going well, shame me into making more of an effort.

Here was Monday's offering: rice wraps. Stuffed with the previous day's leftover baked salmon, grated carrots, chopped sorrel, and a little soy sauce and sesame oil.

Rating: Excellent (and yes, I do say so myself)

And in the meantime, if you have any ideas, please send them. Quick.

Things That Say Fall

2011-10-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

First, this coral bark maple tree. In the morning it glows a bright red; in the afternoon it's a transparent yellow and orange. Either way it's almost hypnotic. On the other side of the garden is a deeply red burning bush and I am contemplating moving one to the other's side just for this brief period of Late Summer Slash Early Fall brilliance: lime green red orange.

Next, some of us are in our high school years at this very moment in time. A momentous moment. Not that this actually says fall, but it's a new development in our homeschooling oeuvre. Not an entirely welcome one, mostly because some of our ways of spending the day have been, well, curtailed somewhat drastically, but I can already see that the challenge alone will be a good thing.

The early learning years are all about the fun and excitement of the hunt, sniffing out new paths and new scents, new interactions and new lands; the later years are all about settling down to something more earnest, more searching and serious. And that's where Max is finding himself these days. He's spending more time with assignments and computers and math texts, while his brother and sister are still in relative Frolic Mode. I expected more tension and Awkward Learning Curves, but so far there have been none at all, which makes us all very glad. New developments, indeed.

And in these colder days of autumn I am stretching my talents as a Baker of Pies. I've never been a big pie maker, for whatever reason, but I made one the other day and it was a new and unexpected thrill. It was so perfectly golden brown and crispy and sweet with soft apple flavour. So I made another one. We eat them for breakfast now. They are perfect with a milky hot latté in the first rays of dawn. I'm trying to convince everyone that a slice of cheddar wouldn't go amiss but they all think I'm nuts.

At night, what is better with dinner than a Yorkshire pudding? Some of us love my puddings so much they stick them with little paper umbrellas and drink the gravy and cranberry sauce as if they had a large, goopy, fruity drink.

Or maybe they just like having me take their pictures while they're doing silly things with frilly paper umbrellas. That FDPG, she loves a good camera op.

Although they were pretty good Yorkshire puddings...

Do All Farmers Sing Like This?

2011-10-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

Fast Comes Fall

2011-10-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

When the nights got colder and wetter last week, and we had a couple of rainy days, I decided to curtail the Wild Tomato Experience happening in the backyard and bring everything in, in all its unripened glory, because this is prime late blight weather here on the Wet Coast.

That's right, Gentle Reader, averting catastrophe is my new motto. No longer am I going to whinge about the end of the summer, about the mildew on my squash, about the cold wet rain smacking me in the face, about the winds whipping my plastic greenhouse into pathetic shreds. No, I will be a Jane Austen Heroine about it all ~~even though it might make me cry a lot~~. I will look on the bright side. I will forge ahead. Fall is just another season, albeit a cold wet windy gray miserable dull one...

Anyhow, that's why I have a mini-greenhouse window full of green tomatoes, reddish tomatoes, and red tomatoes sitting on my deck. And newspapers strewn around inside the house with tomatoes and zucchinis and tomatillos and peppers strewn around on top of those newspapers. I am averting catastrophe. Makes for some fun conversations with visitors: "Don't you know you're supposed to pick them when they're RED?" (said with many guffaws) "Do you know you have a lot of tomatoes on your floor in there?" (um, no kidding Sherlock) or my own personal favourite "Why'd you plant so many if you had to bring them all in?" (there really IS no answer to this in polite company, is there?)

So, with this new motto in hand, I decided to revamp the vegetable garden (the one you see here on the left) because it is, and I do hate to admit this, poorly designed.

Who designed it, you ask?

Sigh. Me.

Look at it: those strawberry plants are positively plotting to trip up any hapless passer-by, while that cedar arbour is no longer upright by ANY stretch of the imagination. There's even a mouse in there somewhere. It's being chased around by the snake that lives in there with it. I see them periodically being chased about by the cat.

It is a mess. Well, it WAS a mess. Until my new attitude got a hold of it.

Here it is, greatly curtailed in its activities.

Gone are about 400 strawberry plants, several unsightly Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants (too covered with aphids to be of use to anyone but the compost), a lot of very boring couch grass, and some really nice beach rocks, rocks I had been looking for all summer and were apparently thrown in there by the Teenager, who thought he was going to rid the world of a mouse with the aid of a strategically placed beach rock. Well, several strategically placed beach rocks. We're not one for dead-eyed aim, evidently.

Yes, I said, a mouse will just sit there while you huck large beach rocks at it.

I am SO funny.

I also removed much soil, so that the upper section would be raised, as in A Raised Bed. No more hanging grimly onto the cedar arbour while picking scarlet runner beans.
Hmm, I think I know why the arbour is no longer upright...

I also added some beach rocks. Some steps. I'm still waiting for the rebar sides on the beds, because I need to get more lumber, which is why that bed suddenly ends like that. On the other end is a wheelbarrow path so I don't need to ruin my delicately arranged steps. I also dumped in some bark mulch so that the winter rains (gulp, steel yourself now) won't make a mockery of my new pathway. It's all tidy, tidy, tidy.
More tidyness.

The funny thing about the fall is that it seems to come all of a sudden. One minute you're basking in the sunshine, next you're shivering in the wind and all the trees are losing their leaves.

I wonder if these figs will ripen?

Or if these grapes will fatten up and get sweet?
No dithering for the coral bark maple. It's getting on with fall without any backwards looks.

Compost 101

2011-09-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

As the result of the need to present a short demonstration for the 4-H Fair, the Dirt Detectives dusted off their presentation skills and made a short video afterwards, so their mum had something to remember it by.

But guess what? It's also educational. So I'm sharing it, in case one of you wants to learn about composting. Because composting is, in the words of my old pal Martha, a good thing.

Review: Math Dictionary For Kids

2011-09-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

The Essential Guide To Math Terms, Strategies, and Tables.

by Theresa R. Fitzgerald

Grades 4-6 (new edition)

When I first opened this updated dictionary, I wondered a bit at its method of organization. Instead of one large reference dictionary (as I was expecting) it was organized into the various mathematical categories: geometry, measurement, decimals, etc. So if I were looking for the definition of numerator I would have to go to the section marked Decimals, Fractions, Percents, and Ratios. I did, and there it was: “The number that is written above the line in a fraction. It tells how many parts of the whole are being considered.” There was an accompanying illustration with a fraction and an arrow pointing to the numerator. Which makes vastly more sense when you think about it, because not only does this contextualize the term for the student (numerator = fractions), but it eliminates the need to thumb through masses of other distracting concepts, as well as avoiding the possible pitfalls of having to cross-reference anything unfamiliar (ie: “Numerator: See also Fraction”). It was all there in one neat, concise, well-defined chapter.

In fact, it was so neat and so concise and so helpful I briefly bewailed not having had it years ago, when we first started homeschooling. The Quick Reference Guides, for example, were exactly what we’d needed. They remind the student briefly as to the hows and whys of some of the more trying math concepts kids encounter around grade 4: decimals, fractions, multiplication, and division. No long complex explanations or strange formulaic scribbles, either: this math dictionary does it simply and economically - just the ticket for most math students.

And if you’ve ever been confronted by that peculiar item known as the geoboard (as, ahem, I was), you will be thrilled to see that there is a truly excellent chapter entitled Learning With Manipulatives. Not only does the author explain the many (impressive) uses for the geoboard, she also demonstrates how to use graph paper, Base 10 blocks, hundred charts, mirrors, pattern blocks, tangrams and tiles. This section is, like the dictionary portion, generously illustrated with diagrams, pictures, and visual examples, so there’s no mistaking what to do with that bag of second-hand tangrams your friend gave you, or how to build geometric solids at home (tip: miniature marshmallows work great but leave the toothpicks rather sticky).

In addition, there are also measurement conversion tables, square root charts, prime number charts, and more. And it’s all in one neatly bound soft-cover volume. This dictionary is an invaluable and inexpensive guide for any young math student.

Long Time No Write

2011-09-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

It's raining right now. Fall is a day or two away - official calendar fall, that is. The weather is still warm during the day, warm enough that light clothing is still the order of the day, so I'm not too sad.

Well, not yet. Give me a few more weeks of rain and I might alter that statement a bit.

We've let up a bit on 4-H summer madness around here, what with our fall fair officially over and school officially started. We're thinking about getting out the bird feeders so our resident bird population leaves off on the sunflowers, still waving languidly in the front garden, but these guys are grouchy about having to wait. Look at them - the glares I have to brave every time I go outside. Wait, is that a unibrow?

The garden did well, once the heat came our way. This was, as I've said before, the worst summer in memory. Yes, there were a couple of weeks there when it was hot, even at night, but for the most part most of my garden cronies are not thrilled with the state of their gardens this year. Things that did well? Tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, berries (the blackberries were positively rhapsodic), tree fruit, beans and peas. Things that didn't do well? Cucumbers (pathetic, sob), eggplant, hot peppers, gourds. That said, for once I got the jump on the rain (and by extension the Potential Late Blight season) by bringing in most of my tomato crop while we were still basking in sun. The rest - the giant Roprecco plum tomatoes from the seeds my friend Samantha sent me - I wrapped in large sheets of plastic. So they are all out there sitting snugly while the rains drip softly down.

And in the meantime the birds sit. And wait. Expectantly. No pressure now, guys.

Angry Bird Tomato

2011-09-10T14:45:00.001-07:00

There he was, just sitting in the garden, no doubt plotting revenge on all the little green ~~tomatoes~~ pigs around him.

My How We Change

2011-08-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I've been AWOL. All I can tell you is that I've been disinclined to blog, disinclined to read blogs, busy with tedious 4-H bureaucracy, busy with canning and preserving and reading and getting ready for fairs, and wildly busy being outside in the garden.

That said, a couple of people in this house turned 10 a couple of weeks ago. Double digits! Look at them when we lived in another town in another year. A year when this duo were still but cute little two year olds. And gosh, how cute they were.

Funny thing is, they still ARE cute. Nice that, being blessed with cuteness...

Befores & Afters

2011-08-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

I've been AWOL so long I can't seem to form a sentence I like.

Such is life in the summer.

But I'm posting to show you two befores and two afters, just for the heck of it. A sort of What I Did This Summer prequel (heck, if Star Wars can do it, I can do it).

First, the new downstairs bathroom. We left this room out of the renovation equation when we moved here because it wasn't too bad, but over the past 4 years things seemed to deteriorate. It didn't help when one neighbour laughed heartily while telling us how one of the previous owners' kids had dumped a 50lb sack of concrete INTO THE TOILET. Methinks it was the same kid who had a black bedroom and charred one of the ceiling beams with his lighter...

Anyhow, this summer one of MY kids turned into A Showering ~~Queen~~ King, so our tax refund went to help us turn this...
Into this...
It wasn't particularly hard, but it took a while and let me just say that it's a jolly good thing there are stores that rent jackhammers and stores that sell porcelain tile cutting drill bits.

Now all we have to do is keep the Showering ~~Queen~~ King from spending all his waking hours in here.

Next, the Lemon Arbor. Such are the wonders of the summer season that even though we've had the worst summer on record (I don't have any stats for you, only the opinion of every single person in town, which I think is far more official) there has been a lot of beautiful green action going on around here. Not a lot of ripened action, per se, (except the lemons, which have been prolific enough for me to make marmalade) but a lot of green action.

How My Week Went 3 (guest post)

2011-07-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

I've blogged before about my action-packed weeks, and I gather from the deluge of email Sheila gets that you are all quite eager to hear more about my exploits (Ed. Note: there has been no email on this topic whatsoever). To that end, I have commandeered the keyboard in the middle of the night in order that you should know what a fabulous life I lead. My life, I must emphasize, is quite fabulous.

I am calling this post How My Week Went 3 because I am an orderly cat and this is my third post in the series. My first post detailed the gripping saga of me against some particularly trying budgies; my second post detailed my battle with a Playmobil Caesar and how I emerged victorious. Now I am going to regale you with some amusing escapades, involving the ~~slaves I own~~ people who call me Toffee. My life requires much subterfuge, much cleverness, and much agility, ~~none of which I possess but my owners humour me greatly~~.

I like to start each morning by chewing on someone's hair. You might like your Omega 3's - I like hair. Each to their own potion.

FDPG and Max are the most obliging in this respect, although Max's hair has a tad too much gel in it for my liking.

After that I like to go to the salon for some grooming. I have several slaves to do this for me, but it is rather exhausting training them. Good help is so difficult to find. FDPG has such a short attention span.

After my comb over I like a cup of coffee.

I find that sitting looking pointedly into the mug generally gets good results.

Not ALWAYS, but usually. Sometimes I have to resort to turning on the television.

That always brings them in.

After coffee I like a little read. This book came highly recommended by the Fat Persian down the road but I have to tell you: it's NOT about dogs. I assumed, by the title, that it was. Now THAT is what I call misleading advertising.

Last time I listen to a Persian...

At this point I usually have a nap. My life is SUCH a whirlwind.

Sometimes I even have two naps. There's a reason they call it Beauty Sleep.

Every so often I like to skulk in the garlic beds, because there is a particularly toothsome snake living in them. I don't know how Sheila knows I'm here, but she usually comes out and shoos me away. It's very annoying. That snake looks quite fat and juicy.

This week there was the Incident of the Butterfly Drinking Bowl (Ed. Note: aka A Photo of Toffee's Big Fat Behind), but we won't get into that. It's all SO undignified. I hate it when unflattering pictures are taken of me, don't you?

Besides, what am I to do when I have a thirst ~~for butterflies~~?

They are so wonderfully crunchy.

Instead I will tell you about my Catwalk Moments. I know, I know, not only do I have a wild and crazy social life, I ALSO model. What can I say? Some of us have it. And I clearly have it.
I'm too sexy for this blog, too sexy for this blog, too sexy for this blog, poor blog blog blog.

And with that I bid you adieu, sweet peons. If you ever have the urge to come and groom me, do visit.

I will make my humans give you tea.

Or something.

Lorquin On My Finger

2011-07-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

A friendly Lorquin's Admiral landed on my finger this week, not once, not twice, but three times. And he obligingly sat for photos. What a charming butterfly. He's quite fond of mud-puddling near the lemon trees.
Speaking of lemon trees — one is almost ready to pick. There's a touch of green still on the underside, or maybe I'm just too chicken to actually remove it from the branch. After all, it has been there for a long time.

Struggles With Strawberries

2011-07-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

It started with this: a deluge of strawberries. An avalanche - a surplus - an overabundance - an excess - a plethora.

A glut, even.

This happy state of affairs comes from not doing what I should have done last year (and the year before), which was pruning off the suckers the plants sent out. And because I am unable to dispose of a plant once it's in the garden (unless it's a weed), I did something rather unadvisable: I left them to multiply all over the garden.

This is great when you're going from 20 plants to 40 plants; this is not great when you're going from 150 plants to 300, which is more in line with what we've got going on out back. People come over and tell me "Wow, you really DO have too many strawberries."

This is me with my strawberries.

We picked them once; we picked them twice; we even picked them three and four times. But they keep coming. The kids have started to hide when I say "Hey, guys, can you help me —?" The freezer is filling up with strawberries in various states of mush and slice; there are 15 quarts of jam on the pantry shelves. We all have Strawberry Arm, too: a condition resulting from too much time immersing one's arms amongst strawberry leaves, resulting in a mild, itchy rash-like condition stretching from the wrist to the elbow (don't know if you'll find it in medical terminology dictionaries, but it DOES exist, trust me).

So I've started to do something I don't normally do: I'm trying variations of recipes.

We had strawberry shortcakes, with whipped cream and heaps of sliced berries. Our shortcakes ranged from hard and biscuit-like to soft and spongey.

We had meringues and fool, which are so good you might actually die of delight, according to Dominic. This dessert involves individual meringues baked in the shape of a giant Kiss, then side-dressed with a gently folded mixture of whipped cream and the foam you get when you skim (strawberry) jam.

We ate them in smoothies. We ate them by themselves. We even watched the squirrel nesting in the pine tree carry them off. No one stirred at this point. We were all relieved to see someone else picking them, I think.

Then I had a brain-wave, brought on in part by the lack of sun this summer: I would make strawberry popsicles.

These are easy, provided you have popsicle molds. Simply purée the berries, add some sweetener (I used icing sugar), maybe some yogurt (tried both ways, prefer it without), then pour them into the molds to freeze.

You will end up with this, a glistening, glittering, shimmering mass of glowing ruby redness.

It tastes good too.

Tweets & Twitters

2011-06-29T20:41:00.001-07:00

Why do your fingers wrinkle when they get wet? Here's a fascinating theory.

Consider sorbet. Even better: consider my lemon verbena sorbet. It's worth having to buy a lemon verbena plant every year.

We are going through a Japanese phase in the house right now. Pickled daikon tastes good but gosh it STINKS.

And finally, the incomparable Anthony Lane reviews the latest dreck out of Hollywood. "Why reach for the subtle...when the crunchingly obvious lies close to hand?" Why indeed?

Things We Learned This Week

2011-06-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

FDPG:

— Learned about the dangers of mixing water and electricity from watching Doctor Who: Waters of Mars. "If I learned ANYTHING from Waters of Mars," she said airily, "it's that water and electricity DO NOT MIX."

Dominic:

That collecting squooshies, be they large, medium, or small enough to fit into one of those coin-operated machines in grocery stores, is a highly enjoyable occupation, because they are so very, well, squooshie.

Believe it or not, he even has a squooshie hat.

The First Visitor

2011-06-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Of the butterfly variety, that is.

How We Spent The Solstice

2011-06-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

I feel compelled to talk about this eventful day, but not for the conventional reasons: first day of summer and so on. No, it's because it was such an eventful day. Who knows, maybe it was because of the solstice?
First of all, we went for a walk. Momentously, the sun was out. I'm putting "momentously" first because the sun has been so, well, neglectful of late. As in: we haven't seen it very often. So that was rather exciting.

In the distance you can see Dominic running. This is Dominic's M.O. He is usually either running or jumping.

Or both. He's a little springbok, this kid. Leap. Jump. Run. Leap. Jump. Run. Repeat.

My house may or may not be in this photo.

Sun. Clouds. Blue sky. The smell of grass and warmth and lilacs and roses and green fields and little drizzling creeks and willows and weeds and dragonflies and bees.

What's not to like?

But here comes the really cheering, magical part of the day. We were in a local drugstore, a Canadian institution which shall remain nameless, with the sole intention of wasting much coinage on LEGO minifigures. We were squeezing and fingering and poking and conferring which package held which minifigure. And, truth be told, we're all disgustingly proficient at it.

FDPG had money with her.

Dominic had no money with him.

I had only my camera case with me.

Max had nothing (or so he says) with him.

Katie found her coveted figures. Dominic, who was not intending to buy anything, was horrified to discover the Elf (a figure he has always wanted), and so begged his twin to lend him some readies.

She played his game and pretended not to have enough cash, then, being the charming, kind, solicitous sister she is, relented before he could get really weenie and said she would lend him some money.

Here he is jumping for joy. He is a very literal sort of person.

But then (there always is a "but then" isn't there?) we got to the till and discovered that the usually meticulous FDPG didn't have enough cash.

Horrors.

We counted out all the nickels, all the dimes, all the pennies, and emptied our pockets, and we were a dollar short.

We all searched our other pockets, and came up with what we thought was an entire dollar. But upon a second counting, we discovered that we were nine cents short.

Nine cents short.

FDPG offered to relinquish one of her precious choices, but only if Max would go hide it in the store so we could come back in an hour and get it, her purse being in the meantime magically refilled.

Dominic offered to relinquish his choice. We all stood and stared at each other. It was an awkward moment, both as a parent and as a Potential LEGO Minifigure Purchaser. Not one I generally like to find myself in. I felt bad for them both, but insisted we make a decision before the three people behind me, who up till that time had been relatively polite about our, err, Deshabille, reneged.

And then it was that the cashier said "hang on a second!" and dashed away. She slipped behind a counter, rummaged in a bag, and came back with a dime.

"I've never done this before," she said. "Ever."

She gave the dime to FDPG. Who beamed. I donated the extra penny to the Karma Fund on the counter (aka the Penny Dish). The three people behind us, even the Eminem lookalike, all looked delighted. After many profuse thank-yous, we walked out of the store, purchases much intact, thrilled with what had just taken place. We were walking through the little mall when Max came upon a dime. "Look!" he said. "A dime! Isn't that what you need?" FDPG grabbed it and raced off, pursued by Dominic. A few minutes later they returned, grinning and feeling quite pleased with themselves.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She said we were the nicest politest kids she'd seen all week!" chortled FDPG. "And she couldn't believe we'd just found a dime like that!"

So that was our first day of summer. Good auguries all round, I'd say.

Rose Sisters

2011-06-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

David Austin Rose: Crown Princess Margareta

Climber: Westerland

David Austin Rose: Golden Celebration.

David Austin Rose: Evelyn

Being A Father

2011-06-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

We never see our parents as people, do we? People who might have had real lives before we came on the scene, people who had adventures, people who did cool things just because. We might have a glimmer of this when we're older, perhaps when we're looking at photos of them from long ago, but by that time we've got kids of our own and we've discovered ourselves just how uninteresting our former lives are to them. But in the meantime we see them as ladders to our next steps, or a form of bank manager, or even the camp cook.

I came home last night, having spent the afternoon up island with FDPG, and Richard was playing guitar in the family room. He is trying to master a song that we saw initially in a lipdub. It's a very catchy tune and it reminds me of many a British pop song, past or present. Given that Richard is from Britain, it doesn't surprise me at all that he likes this song, but it perplexes his teen son, who of the age where watching his father play a pop song on a guitar - and sing, for heaven's sake - seems just plain weird. He doesn't stop to consider his own long hours, sitting in his room, banging away monotonously on his keyboard, droning out the same chord over and over again, evidently.

As soon as I walked in the door he sidled up to me. "Dad has been playing that song all afternoon," he confided, as though we should be getting out the Advil.

"Oh," I said, "he likes that song. So do I. He just wants to learn it." "Why?" Max replies, still unable to comprehend that his father might have the same pop star leanings he does. I could say that his dad used to be quite the classical guitarist, that he'd even won competitions in his teens, and that when I met him he was the guy who played guitar and sang at beach parties, but I don't. It would probably cause Max to run screaming from the room. His parents - doing cool things? Eeks.

"Because it's a fun song and he likes playing the guitar," I say instead. I am laughing by this time, and so is Richard. It's funny seeing a 14 year old so unnerved by his aged, past it, should-be-sedate-by-now parents.

"Oh," he says, finally. "Hmm. IN-teresting." He then thumps down the stairs to his room, sits at his desk, and resumes his monotonous, bass-heavy, banging away. I file this memory away for another day, for the day when the grown up Max is a father himself, watched by his own puzzled children as he hauls out his aged keyboard and picks out his own tune, thinking of other times and other songs. A day I might not be around to see, but I know it will come. They always do.

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there. And to all you potential fathers.

The Hungry Caterpillar

2011-06-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

We had a wind last night, which meant that all the charming tent caterpillars on my neighbours' trees blew all over my yard. While I generally like my neighbours, I most emphatically do not like their tent caterpillars. This year I had finally cracked the code of the tent caterpillar, too: I BTKed the heck out of them. There were none on my trees this year. Well, none that lasted past the miniscule larva stage.

Then came that wind. That bad bad wind.

I went out this morning, unsuspecting, to water and inspect. As I trailed around with the hose, cleaning out bird baths and beds, I noticed them —

All over the place.

Tent caterpillars.

Horrified, I shook my fist at the trees they'd lived in prior to flinging themselves, via that fortuitous wind, into my yard for some wanton rioting. I sprayed a few with the JET function on my water wand. It was a pleasantly violent experience, but I realized that I couldn't very well blow every single caterpillar around to smithereens this way: Although my Constantly Showering Teen would probably say that I am a Obnoxious Water Nazi, I like to think that I am a Relatively Dedicated Water Conserver. Plus, spraying a gazillion tent caterpillars with the JET function might get a little silly after a while, not to mention all the holes in the soil as a result (did I mention that we have fairly intense water pressure?).

So I did the next best thing: I started squishing them. It was almost as satisfying as spraying them, but it also meant that I had to pull them off the leaves and fronds and flowers and ripening strawberries. Which was how I noticed the white spots on their heads.

Know what that means? That little white dot? It means that a parasitic wasp has laid its eggs on the caterpillar. Click here for a brief glimpse into this weird aspect of insect life (and be glad I didn't give you the first link I found on Google, which was, even by my standards, stomach-churningly gross).

Which led me into wondering what the whole cycle looked like. Well, other than really gross.

So I enlisted the assistance of FDPG, aka Indefatigable Caterpillar Squisher. "Let's put them in the aquarium and see what happens!" I said. Delighted at the idea of something so incredibly thrilling, she raced around the yard, capturing caterpillars with white spots on their heads.
Which was how we ended up with this.

Weeds and caterpillars.

And rocks.

A little soil.

Here's my Control Caterpillar. He doesn't have a white spot on his head, so he can show us the life cycle of a Non-Egged Tent Caterpillar.

FDPG doesn't know that I've introduced a Control Caterpillar.

Yet.

We'll see how long it takes before she notices.

I don't think it'll take long, somehow.

She's keeping a very close eye on them.

New LEGO Designs

2011-06-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

I call this the Steampunk Bird, but since the LEGO designer here doesn't like the term "steampunk" I never use it when he can hear me.

It's a very cool looking bird, though, isn't it? I like the fact that it has a banana as a beak.

A Doctor Who Get Away car. This was made for Silence In The Library, because it can outwit, outlast, and outrun the Vashta Nerada.

Eeks, just typing that gives me goosebumps.

Hey! Who turned out the lights?

This little number is called Mummy In The Garden. It is, apparently, me in the garden, although I never wear orange and my hands (hopefully) aren't claws.

Oh wait, I jest: I really DO have LEGO hands.

And today we just received our long-awaited order of Brick Journal magazines. There was much rejoicing in the land, lemme tell you. And there will likely be more posting on this blog as a result.

Some of the LEGO items posted in this blog series were built using this kit, this kit, other Educational LEGO kits (can't seem to find them on that site anymore but they are in the catalogue), this book and this book.

ADDED: By the way, check out this link: LEGO Nomenclature. I think we need to survey our assorted LEGO builders and build our own chart.

Why I Love The Tonys

2011-06-13T09:26:00.001-07:00

The Difference A Day Makes

2011-06-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

To a rose...
Same rose, one day later.

(the colour difference was what enabled me to identify this rose, because when I was given it no one knew what it was, beyond it being a David Austen rose)
Those whitish spots on the leaves are from the sulphur I sprinkled on a few weeks ago: it's supposed to be one of the organic treatments for black spot. I'm not holding my breath but so far so good!

June Garden Tour

2011-06-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

First of all, look at this rose. Isn't this the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen?

I call it my Divorce Rose, because I obtained this rose as the result of a divorce. Not mine, I hasten to add. The neighbour of a friend. They were divorced; she divested herself of his roses; I went over and with the help of my friend, dug them up. They were, very worryingly, growing under the driveway and when this one was uprooted there was every expectation that it would not survive the transplantation. Luckily it did. And now I have this spectacle each year, in the late springtime. Not only does this rose look heavenly, it smells heavenly. It's a David Austin Rose: Golden Celebration.

Next, the Princesses Victoria Louise. Hurrying off to some function or another. They have a very active social life.

Well, wouldn't you if you looked like this?

The new Otto Graut lavender. Alas and alack but apparently it doesn't last long, this new hybrid specimen of mine.

Boo hoo hoo. Now, that's what I call not playing fair. When one develops a new specimen one owes one's horticultural public a long-lived product.

We'll see. So far it's bonding well with the driftwood and the rock.

Our new Butterfly/Bee/Insect drinking bowl. Guaranteed undrownable! Fill your tray with sand, then add just enough water to make a slight puddle on one side. Refill daily. No one will ever go to an early grave from drinking at this font.

My Multi Blue clematis. Do you say CLEM-a-tis, or do you say clem-AH-tis? Or shall we call the whole thing off?

First ~~Knight~~ artichoke.

An iris. A lovely blue iris.

I want to trill "Three Little Maids From School Are We!" when I see these, but they are boy soldiers, so it's not quite the same thing, is it? Even in this metrosexual world of ours.

They are guarding the fig tree from our wild and crazy neighbours. The ones who own the wild and crazy Maximus, chewer of all things green and figgy.

One of the blueberry bushes. They are being amazing AND fecund this year, thanks no doubt to my constant application of BTK.

Last year they were neither; they were denuded and tragic because of the dastardly tent caterpillars. FDPG counts their berries daily, and exclaims daily how wonderful it will be to eat them.

I hope I make it to these bushes before FDPG does...

The Macintosh is also having a particularly fruitful year. When Max discovered the name of this tree, he asked if I'd planted it because we were Macintosh computer users.

Given that this tree was planted before the advent of the Macintosh, I decided to toy with him. I think, I replied, that this apple was the inspiration for the Mac computer. THIS. EXACT. TREE. IN. THIS. YARD.

He still doesn't believe me. Oh callow youth.
Finally, here is what I did with my Can't Throw Them Out Tomatoes. Yes, I, the person who hates having things-in-pots around the yard, now have a number of tomatoes in pots. Only, I hasten to add, because it was either this or throw them in the compost. And I am, I regret, unable to discard a perfectly good plant.

It's almost pathological.

See? I told you. Here are some more. No snickering when they look crowded and sad, now, you hear?

Some people like to rescue kittens - I like to rescue plants.

I'll take your kittens, too, though, come to think of it. I like kittens.

Alright, tour's over. Tea is served in the front lobby. No pushing now.

Monday Bits & Pieces

2011-06-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

Canucks vs. Boston. I will comment no further. Ridiculous game. Blah. And to think I call myself a Canuck. (I realize that a lot of people think 'Canuck' is a pejorative term but let me just say that I am not one of those people)

For some reason this made me sad. I read it aloud to the kids at breakfast, and at supper tonight, while the boys were watching Boston whup the Canucks' collective bottoms, FDPG and I watched this. And felt our hearts fly at the end, when Darcy walked through the emerging dawn light, dew dripping from the hem of his billowing coat, and held hands with Elizabeth Bennet. Lovely lovely lovely.

Nothing like lying in deep green grass, is there?

More garden pictures on the way. Am reading Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook (trying to get ideas for a new greenhouse but REALLY wishing I had one of these), using a lot of straw for mulching to save on watering, thinking about making some hypertufa butterfly watering bowls, planting pepperoncini (set in the cold frame), and watching the first artichokes pop through their mass of leaves. Also repotting the millions of tomato plants I have left over before they succumb to total neglect (drop by for a freebie!), wondering where to put the cucumbers and pumpkins we have sprouting, and watching the first of the lemons ripen.

And it's finally HOT. Hurrah. Dried 5 loads of laundry out on the deck today. Jane Austen heroines, indeed.

Two Little Monkeys Sitting In A Tree

2011-06-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

You might have to squint really hard — or double-click on the photo — to see the monkeys.

Does This Mean That The Lazy Days of Summer Are Here?

2011-06-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

Poetry — With A Twist

2011-06-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today Dominic and FDPG worked on rhyming couplets. We started with helping & linking verbs, then, as these things do, our lessons morphed into poetry.

We're using a very loose blend of First Language Lessons, English For The Thoughtful Child, and Classical Writing Aesop this year. I say blend because there are days when I find one too constraining, or the other too predictable, but they are all fairly similar in method so it's easy to jump from one to the other with too much fuss.

Anyhow, we picked this poem and decided to fool around with it, because it's so charming and light-hearted and simple to memorize. And, well, they already HAD memorized it last year, so adapting a lesson for it was easy.

The Months Sara Coleridge

January brings the snow,  makes our feet and fingers glow.   

February brings the rain,Thaws the frozen lake again.  

 March brings breezes loud and shrill,  stirs the dancing daffodil.   

April brings the primrose sweet,  Scatters daises at our feet.   

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,  Skipping by their fleecy dams.

  June brings tulips, lilies, roses,  Fills the children's hand with posies.   

Hot July brings cooling showers,  Apricots and gillyflowers.   

August brings the sheaves of corn,  Then the harvest home is borne.  

Warm September brings the fruit,  Sportsmen then begin to shoot.   

Fresh October brings the pheasants,  Then to gather nuts is pleasant.   

Dull November brings the blast,  Then the leaves are whirling fast.  

 Chill December brings the sleet,  Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

After they wrote it out I had them make up their own rhyming couplets. "Pick two months," I said, "any month. Then make up a couplet for each month."

I went off to make lunch.

FDPG interpreted it her way, which meant that she made up more than one couplet for each month — because more is better, right? Here's her example:

Cold December brings the snow,

With it traffic cannot go.

They plough the streets with all their might,

But always snow comes back at night.

She had something started using August, her birth month, but at printing time it wasn't quite ready for publication. That's our FDPG, always not quite finished. I have suggested that she translate this into Latin as a motto but she doesn't find my suggestion quite as amusing as I do.

Here are Dominic's examples. Dominic is a man of economy. Why do two couplets when only one is required? This was perhaps the only example I have of Dominic listening carefully to my instructions, so when he corrected FDPG, in his inimitable way

"I LISTENED TO MUM, YOU DIDN'T"

we were all quite astounded.

January is cold and bright

So let's get in a snowball fight!

December is nice and loud and clear,

And let's fill the house with Christmas cheer!

Then we went in and had lunch. They were all sniggering when they came into the dining room, and Max asked me if I'd heard their other couplets. "Other?" I said. "You wrote more?"

I should have known better. I'm tempted to call some of this doggerel, but one of them is merely being observant. Nevertheless, I think this lot will stay in the Ogden Nash section of the library.

FDPG:

August is a garden time

For gin and tonic with a lime!

Dominic:

It's August, let's go to the petting zoo

Look — a cow— mooooooo.

(never mind that cows aren't commonly found in petting zoos)

In Which We Get A Lemon House

2011-05-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

It all started with this: two lemon trees, a concrete wall, some mulch, and a cold frame.

It seemed so easy at the time. Stick them in the ground. Watch them grow. Harvest lemons - in the event that they fruited. What I didn't bank on was how much growing them - this not being your typical lemon growing climate - would obsess me.

Okay, maybe I did. I might not have recognized it at the time, but hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?
So I planted the lemons, and left them. Then I started looking at the path to the cold frame from this angle. The cold frame is at the end on the left, that small blob of plastic. But the path was so very crooked. Bumpy. Hard to mow. Awkward when picking peas and beans from the arbour (on the right). I will flatten this path, I thought. I will lift the sod, remove some soil, then replace the sod. The path will be flat and smooth...

...and it will lead to a Lemon House.
Fast forward several months, some discussions with family members (some willing, some rather, hmmm, let's just say recalcitrant and leave it at that), and many many discarded ideas.

Here is the germ of the method we finally settled on - in the bed of that red pickup. An old glass door set into a wooden frame. The man on the left (AKA: Willing Father) built it; the man on the right (AKA: Recalcitrant Husband) assisted in getting it into this truck. He has no idea what he's in for, which is probably a good thing.
Ignorance really IS bliss in some cases.
Once we got the glass over to the back yard of our house, there was, this being a Male Building Event, much measuring and discussion.

Endless measuring and discussing, actually.

Which was when I noticed that Recalcitrant Husband was standing on my lemon tree.

Bad Recalcitrant Husband.

We have a brief break while I intervene in the Male Building Event. Recalcitrant Husband, for all his wonderful qualities, has a long and distressing history of standing on plants in the garden without any clue OR concern whatsoever. When apprised of his Plant Standing Transgressions he doesn't bat an eyelid, either. "Well, what's it doing there?" he says, sometimes rather rudely. "That's not a good place for a —" I point out that he's actually IN the garden, where plants are SUPPOSED to be, but he never quite grasps the irony of my remarks. So I must be vigilant.

Here we have Lemon trees with Protective Coatings.

They laughed when I did this. Recalcitrant Husband might even have rolled his eyes at Willing Father a little, but I remained firm: either the lemons have a cover throughout the entire Building Experience or I stand around barking out remarks like "YOUR FOOT IS ON THE LEMON TREE!" and "WATCH THAT LEMON TREE!" and "ACCKKKKKK! THE LEMON TREE IS GETTING SQUISHED!" and maybe even a little "GET YOUR FEET OFF THAT LEMON TREE."

Fortunately everyone saw the sense in keeping the covers on the lemon trees.
They then resumed their endless measuring and discussing.

Measuring.

Discussing.

Measuring some more.

Discussing some more.

Then there was this lot, who spent a lot of time goading other people into getting ice cream from the freezer and eating it. They look innocent enough, but don't be leaving them near your freezers any time soon, lemme tell you.

And then suddenly it was up. The glass was on, the posts were in place, the frame was straight, the supports were screwed in.

It all looked wonderful, from any angle.

But it was when I was taking this picture, ostensibly of the post and concrete block, that I noticed how, well, sunken the lemon trees were.

The lemons were sprawled on the ground, too. They'd been like that all winter.

Not a good look for a lemon, if you ask me.

So today I dug them up and set them on a base of soil and compost and manure. Built a little brick box around them.

Took another picture.

Stood back.

Admired.

Gazed.

Then thought "Hmm, it needs a little something on the sides."

And there you have it: The Lemon House

Before & After

2011-05-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

I love these poppies. I can't think why everyone doesn't grow them. They are soft and frilly and glorious on a sunny day.

Princess Victoria Louise

It's Coming...

2011-05-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

A clever little short for all you HP fans out there:

LEGO Wednesday

2011-05-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

Some of us like building things out of LEGO. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that some of us are slightly obsessed with building things out of LEGO. Some of us can stay in our cave of a room for hours building Things That Go. So some of us thought we'd develop a new blog feature, in which we showcase the things that some of us are building (because some of us like being part of the bloggy world and are tired of hearing about all the clever things a certain sister is doing).

So, with that in mind, here is a video of an item a certain nine year old someone built the other day. And yes, we DO know that it's not Halloween. It's just that some of us really like Halloween.

Here Comes The Sun

2011-05-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

When Dominic went outside this morning to open up the greenhouse and cold frame, he did it BEFORE breakfast, not long after, as we usually do.

Look - it's 7:15am and there something causing the Apricot Punch superbells (calibrachoa) to turn their heads.

Could it be — the sun?

I just planted this yesterday: besides the Apricot Punch I've got Trailing Lilac Mist and Coralberry Punch, with a little Snowstorm Giant Snowflake in there for trailing appeal. Sounds like a Webkinz game, doesn't it? I half expect to see a pink pony and a little furry hedgehog hitting yellow triangular stuffies around with sticks or something.

And what better to do after opening the greenhouse than to have a swing on the willow tree?

Such greenness after such a wet spring. Suddenly everything is lush and glowing again.

Happy green trio: hakonechloa macra 'Aureola,' the front porch Christmas tree and a destined-for-topiary box shrub.

Random Notes

2011-05-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

— am enduring Hockey Playoffs. Need I say more?

— took a basic First Aid course with a number of Desperately Cool teenagers. Watched the highly animated instructor leap around and make funny jokes in front of a very tough audience (see note about D.C. teenagers). Eventually everyone warmed up and laughed instead of staring blankly (which, I am informed by reliable sources, is not intended to look blank - it's intended to look casual and hip and super cool). There was one tricky moment when he used me as a Fork Stabbing Model and wrapped my hand so tight it went purple, but that was just a minor blip on an otherwise charming afternoon.

— Woke FDPG up at 2:45 am on the morning of the Royal Wedding and sat through a couple of hours of wildly pleasant royal bonding time. Everything was so beautiful, so exciting, so sweet, so charming, and so very delightful that we both went back to bed around 5am, feeling as though our strenuous efforts to stay awake had been entirely worth it.

— watched the Neil Gaiman-penned episode of Doctor Who. Suranne Jones is very compelling, we all agreed. It was not wildly thrilling. It lacked something.

— watched the Survivor Finale. It was, thankfully, a foregone conclusion that ended as it should have done. Sometimes the Resentful Jury gets a little caught up in jealous subjectivism and votes for the Coattail Hanger-on instead of the Diabolical Mastermind, but this time no one could dispute the perfection of the game Boston Rob played. Well, that and the fact that the only other choices were Phillip, a nut-job of a man if there ever were one, and Natalie, a naive 19 year old "dancer" who clung to Rob like grim death in lieu of actually doing anything of her own volition. By the way, what's a "dancer"? What kind of dancing are we talking about: "dancing" or dancing? And where are we doing it? I remain mystified. The fact that Rob was exceedingly charismatic, tanned, and slim from weeks eating next to nothing added to the thrill of the game, giving FDPG and I the perfect end to the day. "Luckily I'm no ordinary man" is my new favourite phrase.

— previewed an Eminem CD for the teenager and decided that it was best on MY iPod and not his. "Explicit lyrics" is an understatement. One song did not make the cut. Eminem, I like you but that song was just plain gross. Irony my foot.

— watching Jekyll. Oh. My. Goodness. James Nesbitt. Lovely.

— bought a gorgeous new kind of lavender: Otto Quast.

— am gearing up for a Gardening Extravaganza Weekend. Can you spell H-O-L-I-D-A-Y?

I can!

Scenes From A Garden

2011-05-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

Today it looked as though summer might actually be arriving. It was hot AND sunny at the same time. It was mildly disconcerting. This hasn't happened since, oh, hmm, let me think, well, since last summer. The greenhouse was like a sauna. We opened the window and the door and I plied the pots with water.

"You have the afternoon off!" I informed the kids, much to their dismay (Tuesday is a good day academically, around these parts). But I had left the garden to pine in weeds and shrubby things for far too long, so off I went, throwing a "go outside!" over my shoulder (aimed mostly at the Boy Who Is Obsessed With LEGO). Then I went off into the garden.

Dig. Edge. Fork.

Weed. Fill wheelbarrow many times. Feel old and feeble lugging wheelbarrow up and down hill to compost bin and so enlist services of teenager, who is lying on grass directly on the way to the compost. Which means that I have to opportunity of observing him regularly. He is pretending to be asleep. Luckily I am not the sort of person who is deterred by this sort of subterfuge. He labours for me good-humouredly, if somewhat reluctantly. Lugging wheelbarrows full of weeds around is not as alluring as, say, listening to music on his iPod and lying prone on the ground with a hoodie over his face in the sun.

I water the garden with fish fertilizer and spread bags of chicken manure over the freshly dug flower border. The smell attracts Oliver the Dog of Little Brain from down the road. Oliver attempts to roll in chicken manure, almost rolling over new calendula seedlings in the process.I smack Oliver on the bum with my garden fork and send him home.

Squish caterpillars on fruit trees. Examine for tent caterpillars. Spray more BT . Admire fruit trees. This year I seem to have a - knock on wood - better handle on my Irritating Chewing Insect On Fruit Tree issue. Last year I lost several crops to them. I also lost a nice crop of apples from this tree (see rock sign below for identification). I spray BT weekly now, and get into every crevice. It is, and here I apologize effusively to former garden centre employees, highly effective when used, umm, properly.

I admire the beans, onions, and purple sprouting broccoli, ignoring the fact that there should be a couple of rows of peas in there, if the interminable spring rain hadn't ROTTED them.

Twice.

Sigh. The things us gardeners do.

Then, work having ended, I wandered around with a camera.

Columbines, as viewed by an ant.

An overwintering avocado. I discovered it when I was clearing out the greenhouse. I thought it was dead.

But it knew it wasn't.

And now look at it.

It's going to sit with the lemons. And the calamondin orange.

The fig. The fig. The fig.
(channel your inner Monty Python and say it the way you'd say The Larch)

I don't know what sort of fig it is, because someone in gave it to Richard when we lived in Vancouver, when it was still a tiny plant in a small pot. Now it's a large plant in a giant oak tub.

I learned how to prune it last year, from the fellow who sold me the lemon trees. It has made a huge difference in it's growing habits. It's no longer leggy and overgrown. Now it's compact and fruitful. Fruitful, get it?

Such a wit, aren't I.

A peach, just getting started.

Hmm, this reminds me of how very OLD I am.

Moving on....

One of the more fortuitous results of learning how to apply BT in the spring is having actual blossoms on the blueberry bushes.

As opposed to viewing their chewed carcasses, covered with caterpillar poo.

Don't you go wombling in the nettle bed, now...

Quick, who recognizes that quote?

So many spring flowers are purple. Here we have a purple clematis, sitting next to the purple lilac...

And that's it for the garden tour. Hope your day is sunny, where ever you are!

Must Have Been A Full Moon

2011-05-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

First, I wore my shirt inside out all through the Chinese grocery today. I only discovered it when I went to replicate the trick the man in front of me at the checkout did for FDPG, to show Dominic (who had been busy looking for coins under all the tills and as such wasn't involved in the checkout antics but managed to find $2.74 in change). The joke, which was weird and inventive, involved sleeves and wrists and when I went to pull my sleeve down, to demonstrate, I discovered that the hem was unusually, well, hemmed. I've had this shirt for a while and I'd never seen the hem look quite like that, so I followed the hem up to the shoulder seam and noticed that the seam was outside the sleeve - a place it normally isn't. I glanced briefly at the front placard and it was only then - yes, call me slow - but it WAS only then that I realized that my nice white peasant top was INSIDE OUT.

I felt extremely idiotic. Even more than usual. I was still laughing rather immoderately when Max hopped into the car, after having put the cart away.

"What's so funny?" he demanded, in his demanding teenagerish way.

"MY TOP IS INSIDE OUT!" I shrieked, in between much hysteria. The twins were in the back, Dominic still wondering what was so funny about wearing a top inside out and FDPG, wondering WHEN I was going to get to that funny joke because she had SUCH a starring role in it.

"Why did you have to tell me that?" he said, much put out. "That is just so embarrassing, MAAWWM." This is his new way of referring to me: MAAWWM. I have no idea what the significance of his American pronunciation habit is but it's highly annoying so actually that might BE the only significance...my usual ripost is to call him MIX, pretending that I am in fact from New Zealand, which highly annoys him. Mature of us, I know.

Then, after dinner, I was walking around with my mug of tea, looking for something. I'd tell you what I was looking for but it would only make me look even MORE idiotic so I won't, but I will tell you that at one point I LOST my mug of tea. I spent another 10 minutes looking for it, then went and whined to Richard, who told me that I'd left it in the hallway cupboard. I went to the hallway cupboard, highly (and vocally) critical that I would leave a mug of tea in a cupboard, and gosh, but there it was. Sitting on the shelf amongst the tins.

"How did you know I'd left it there?" I asked Richard, my mind swimming with spy cams.

"I know your thought processes," he said, not taking his eyes off the newspaper.

So I decided to regale him with my Inside Out Top story. "Guess what I did at the Chinese grocery store today?"I asked him.

"You wore your top inside out," he said, still not taking his eyes off the newspaper.

He swears no one told him.

What's In Your Food?

2011-05-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

To read more about this, click here.

Voting Day: Part II

2011-05-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

The twins and I have been working through this book for the past couple of weeks. It's called How To Build Your Own Country. Every time we went to the Teach Supply store I'd glance through it, then think "Nyah, I don't need to spend $18 when I can get them to read the newspaper and stuff."

Then one day I thought "Who am I kidding? Even I don't read some of that political drivel. Boooooring." So I bought the book.

And I'm glad that I did. It's been a very fun few weeks and we're still only half-way through. It's simple without being simplistic, and it directs you through the essentials: How To Stake Out Your Identity (name your country! find a population! design a flag! choose a motto!); Run The Country ( hold elections! write a constitution! make laws! Make money!); and finally, Meet The Neighbours (who's who? keep the peace!).

To begin with, we chose names for our new countries (you can't enter FDPG's room anymore without a Greenistan passport or a visitor visa). We made passports for them, using our own Canadian passports as a rough guide. Inside each passport we have a print-out of the national anthem, which some of us sang every day for the next week. We also had conventional passport information, where we learned that FDPG was born in Gallifrey (just like a certain Doctor) and that Dominic was in reality over 200 years old. We created a national flag. We also went to a babelfish site and turned English mottos into Latin. We even went here and made coats of arms (you can also go to this site and do much the same thing, but with less explanation). Fun fun fun.

Then today, because it's Election Day in our part of the world, we held a Mock Election. FDPG and Dominic were each allowed two candidates, of their own choosing, and they had to present a platform to Max and myself, after which we ~~chose the least silly Webkin~~ voted for our favourite. It ended, let's not hope presciently, in a coalition.

Here are some of their election promises:

I will plant more trees in places that are in need of trees!

I will improve everything that needs improving!

There will be no more horrible feedlots!

I will ban bad pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides!

If there's anything I've forgotten, call me!

Vote for me - it will be a happy land with gold bars, chocolate cakes, burgers and milk shakes!

It will be a land the world will never ever forget!

Grassland will turn out to be the nicest place on EARTH! No stinging nettles! (huh?)

Now we're off to the polls to vote. The twins like this bit because the polling station volunteers are always nice retired people who like to see kids at the polls, so they hand out cookies and stickers and stuff, and are generally very welcoming.

Check out this video for more information on the book. And may the best candidate win...

Voting Day: Part 1

2011-05-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

This such an easy way to dye eggs, other than the hours spent beforehand expelling the contents, of course. Each year I make bigger and bigger holes in each end, and each year my jaw muscles are less and less sore. Tip: make sure you pierce the yolk before you start blowing away on that egg. Your jaw will thank you.

All you need is olive oil, vinegar, and regular old food dyes. This link will give you more detailed instructions.

We saw petit fours in this month's Martha Stewart, and FDPG was enthralled, so I got out some cookbooks and made a few (hundred thousand). I see why they have somewhat fallen out of fashion with the masses: time consuming and a little too sweet on the outside. They sure are pretty though. I might see how long they will look pretty on the sideboard, just like they do with those Happy Meals...

Now for the Egg Hunt!

Making Peeps

2011-04-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd follow on the heels of my Cowardly Parents rant with a fluffy piece.

As in marshmallow fluffiness. (isn't fluffy a great word?)

We used this recipe from the April issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. We didn't use any vanilla and we used a lot more than one tablespoon of icing sugar to coat the baking sheet, but other than that it was all weirdly easy. I felt mildly abashed that it's taken me 12 years to get over my "they must be too complicated - don't think I'll make them any time soon" making marshmallows hang-up.

I know, I know. Call me irrational. Some people are afraid of spiders. I'm afraid of fluffy marshmallows.

Tips Based On Sheila's Experiences: have a bowl of hot water on hand, with a dish towel alongside to rinse the cookie cutters in between cuts; have the bowls of sanding sugar ready BEFORE you cut the first marshmallow- those marshmallows are sticky; have a side dish of icing sugar standing on alert for when you suddenly run out of sanding sugar - those marshmallows are sticky; make sure your children don't open the back door when they are all resting colourfully on a board in preparation for their Reveal, because the wind coming in the back door might blow the sugar all over the counter and sugar is sticky (when wet).
Next up: Marbleized Eggs

(early tip for blowing eggs: use a thumbtack to make the holes in the eggs, break the yolk, and make the hole large enough so you don't cause spasms in your jaw muscles afterwards)

A Generation Of Cowardly Parents

2011-04-20T21:56:00.000-07:00

I don't happen to be one of those 'cowardly parents' (ask my kids, they'll all shriek with laughter at the very idea of it), but I see the evidence of these parents when I'm out and about: young kids with expensive jewelled cell phones or laptops; young kids with wildly inappropriate clothing; young kids hanging out where they shouldn't be; young kids who lack the most basic of social skills, and are generally excused by their parents with either a "She's shy" or some nervous laughter.

Emphasis on young. I'm not talking teens. Move down the age scale a tad.

And so this article really struck a chord with me. Ever since FDPG grew out of the Girls 2 - 6X department of any clothing store, I've been noticing it. The clothing leaps from bright colours and funky designs to grays and blacks and weird slogans, things like PRINCESS IN TRAINING or GIRLS JUST WANNA SHOP or HAND OVER THE CREDIT CARD or my own personal favourite: JUICY. Sure, I want my 9 year old to have a pair of pants with JUICY slapped across her bum. That's not weird at all, is it? So far I've managed to sidestep most of this crap by buying at boutique shops where they eschew the slogans (mostly in favour of overpricing their stock, lol), but I can see the day dawning when FDPG, quirky as she is, is going to want more daring outfits.

But LZ Granderson said it far more eloquently than I ever could, and that's probably how I'm going to answer her if it ever comes to that. Given that her brother is currently going through his own fashion statement period, I'm sure it will. Here are a few excerpts:

I get it, Rihanna's really popular. But that's a pretty weak reason for someone to dress their little girl like her. ...Friends bow to peer pressure. Parents say, "No, and that's the end of it."...A line needs to be drawn, but not by Abercrombie. Not by Britney Spears. And not by these little girls who don't know better and desperately need their parents to be parents and not 40-year-old BFFs.

We don't want to risk the wrath of our kids, he says, so we give in. Here here, I say. Listen to the man. Then get yourself a backbone and remember who you are in your child's life.

Last Words On Seattle

2011-04-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

Some FDPG-isms from our trip down south:

*While listening to her mother driving on the I-5, she said:

"This family's middle name is swear!"

*When asked to think of a theme for her brother's new Mad Scientist mini-fig, she said:

"Even though I look like Terminator, I've got feelings." (we recently finished a highly academic exploration of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies)

*When we first crossed the border and got some gas:

"Our car has American gas in it now. It sounds so different."

*When she found me locked in the change room at the hotel pool (you need a key card to get OUT of the room, something I discovered a little too late, lol), she said:

"Don't worry, Mum, I can remember all this stuff for you. By the way, isn't it amazing to have endless hot water like this?" After which she forgot her shoes and her bathing suit in that very same change room. And we almost got locked in again.

*When first peeking into the closet of the posh conference hotel we were staying in:

"Look! There's an ironer!" (to which her brother replied "What's that for?")

*And finally, when watching a commercial of dubious decency (the Shake Weight), one which I finally turned off whenever it came on because it seemed cringingly pornographic, she said:

"Ha ha! There's Mum's favourite commercial!" And was convulsed with her own hilariousness, particularly when we chanced to see the Shake Weight at one of those As Seen On TV stores. Oh my.

Things To Do With LEGO

2011-04-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

FDPG and Dominic, once they knew we'd be going to ~~a LEGO store~~ Seattle, saved all the money they could wheedle out of their family - for an entire year (wheedle, I mean, not save).

Just kidding. They did both.

And, once we got to the LEGO store, they promptly blew it on a couple of sets. In about, ooh, maybe 12 minutes?

Those LEGO people, they sure know how to market their overpriced stuff (dare I say this out loud? will the LEGO gods be angry? shoot bolts of curiously shaped LEGO lightning at me?). My kids were thrilled at the prospect of dropping $150 on a small shop. Thrilled.

But when all is said and done, it's breath-taking in its cuteness. Look at that city block - even Sheila the LEGO Cheapskate would like to live there. This block comprises the Greengrocer, the Fire Brigade, and the Grand Emporium. The house at the end is a creation of our very own Mr LEGO (aka Dominic).

This is what Mr LEGO looks like.

"Ha ha ha! My evil plan to wheedle all the money out of my mum's bank account worked! Ha ha ha! Take that, Mortgage! And that, Grocery Bill! Mwa-ha ha!"

Ha ha ha, indeed.

"Goodness me, that joke is in very poor taste. What are you teaching your son when you joke about him spending mortgage money on LEGO? You're being fiscally irresponsible. I wave my fan at you in disapproval."

"Oh come ON. Lighten up Geisha Girl. Without all that money WE wouldn't be here either! Think of all the trouble that LEGO store employee had to go to to find us - would you want that wasted? Not to mention all the fun that stupid cat has with us at night when all the humans are asleep."
"We are the Borg Collective. We have come to absorb more money from your mother to fund our trips across the universe. What with gas being so expensive we have taken to stooping very low indeed. Mr LEGO, get your mother for us, resistance is futile. She WILL be assimilated. Well, her bank account. We don't know if we want her and her silly humour in here with us. She might give us ideas."

Things To Do In Seattle: Part III

2011-04-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

If you google this place (Volunteer Park Conservatory) you will find nothing but rave reviews ("free admission!" "fabulous collection of hothouse plants!" "the cacti are incredible!"), but what stood out most for me was the look of the place.

Look at all that glass. Those angles. Those arches. That's what convinced me we HAD to visit. The kids were less convinced: "We're going to look at flowers?" said Max, incredulously. "Can't you walk around a park here without me and look at flowers? Can you drop me off at the Apple Store first?"
"No," I said firmly. "You will love this place. It will be amazing."
Here is the inside ceiling in the front vestibule - original to the initial structure.

There are five different 'houses,' all with differing climates. As you walk in you enter the orchid section, although I was told that it is more correctly the area where they have rotating displays.

This is the temperate zone: hydrangeas, tulips, ivy, ferns, and mosses. It was so lush and green and cool - nothing like my own garden at the moment, lol.

Oh, for a glass house. I'd be happy to dress in the basement.

A bell of some significance. I was too busy watching Richard and the twins play Dr. Livingstone amongst the ferns (straight hand raised to forehead, quizzical intent look in the eyes) to read the plaque properly, to be honest.

Well, that and admiring those rocks around the beds. Someone deliver some rocks to my front yard, stat.

Maybe a little gravel to go with them?

Please?

This was the warmer rainforest area, complete with ant trees and carnivorous plants.

(FDPG wants me to add that there is also a mysterious pond filled with magical coins, guarded by some terrifying carnivorous plants, a pond that she and Dominic imagined had been put there JUST for them, assuming they dared to brave the FLESH-EATING PLANTS)

I think someone's been reading too much Percy Jackson, myself.

The wheels that open and close the roof windows. I kept imagining seeing Miyazaki characters everywhere - wrenching on wheels and looking desperate as silly men in airplane gear chase them.

I think someone's been watching too much Miyazaki, myself.

Cacti. Wheels. Octopus.

This cactus looked so Dr. Seussishly furry and touchable and LIVING that I touched it. An Ostrichcactosaurus!

Warning: this furry non-living cactus has sharp spines

Ouch.

I have about 18 photos of these things. They were so gorgeously round and plump that we stared at them for a good 10 minutes, along with some giggling Japanese girls who also seemed to find them irresistible.
This is a very odd contraption: the boxes at the end set off vibrations that set off the cymbals, so the whole thing plays a delicate rambling wind song tune.

So there you go: our visit to the Volunteer Park Conservatory. Oh, and yes, the kids did enjoy it there, even the Apple-obsessed teen. We spent about 2 hours here, and not once did anyone say "When are we leaving?"

Must be all that gardening, Miyazaki-watching, and Percy Jackson reading we do.

Things To Do In Seattle

2011-04-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

Lobby shot. Yes, those are actual trees in the lobby. I think there was at least a city block's worth of space in it. Every time we walked through it we did a LOT of staring, whether at the trees, the people lounging around them, or the architecture. There were four elevator units in this area alone. Yes, we probably did look like total yokels, pointing and gaping and chattering exitedly. Fortunately I was the only one in the family who came anywhere near to realizing this, but I'm okay with that.

It was also weirdly clean. We all noticed how clean it was, casting no aspersions on my housekeeping skills, of course. While I like a tidy house, I don't particularly like being the person keeping it tidy. Ask my family - they will all agree with me.

Look at the top of this shot. Can you see the beginnings of a curved roof?

Here's what was perched on top of that curved ceiling.

Don't ask me how I got this shot because I will then have to confess that I lay down on the floor right there in the lobby, and even then I couldn't get the entire window in the frame.

And no, not ALL my children were embarrassed by the sight of their mother laying on the floor of a fancy hotel. Only one of them was, but the next day I caught him doing the same thing, trying to get the same shot. Besides, it was really early in the morning (and the floor was weirdly clean).

This glass sculpture was hanging in another part of the hotel. It was 3 parts wildly beautiful and 1 part creepy looking. At one point we were all standing underneath, taking photos, and we must have all had the same idea - WHAT IF IT FALLS? - because we all ran to the wall at the same time, then laughed immoderately at the symmetry of our paranoia.

A floating bridge. Do I sound like a total hick when I say that we were all absolutely AGOG at the concept of driving on a floating bridge? It went on for so long that we all became quite blasé, except for those of us who wondered whether we could see Bill Gates' house or not.

A water tower. You can walk to the top of this structure and walk around it, whilst reading instructional panels about the area (Capitol Hill). The whole time we were doing this there was a bike race going on, so we were accompanied by a) an AM radio DJ narrating the race, and b) FDPG and Dominic dashing from side to side narrating their view of the racers.

Nothing like two 9 year olds, absolutely thrilled with themselves, shrieking and thumping around on a wooden floor, competing with an AM DJ. While their mother struggles with her acrophobia.

We managed to empty the tower of sightseers in about, oooh, maybe 4 minutes?

After wandering around Capitol Hill, wishing we had a monster house (and pretending we didn't notice the miniature yards and serious algae issues), we drove over to this place. I've only ever seen their products over the internet, so it was a thrill to be able to see it all in person. Instead of shrieking with laughter at silly things on the computer screen, we could all shriek with laughter while HOLDING the thing. Perfect.

The teenager was ever so slightly mortified. The idea of his mother buying a can of Uh-Oh Underpants while laughing really loudly was too much, I guess. But he did have a peek at the 5¢ Glow In The Dark Marvel ("An Attraction Without Parallel"). And I got myself a fortune from the Talking Sailor Fortune Booth (love these things). According to old Salty:

"You are a strong believer in fate. You feel you have no control over your destiny. Fortunately you are destined to be very happy indeed. You are somewhat irresponsible and this has caused you some hardships. You have a neat and tidy nature and can't tolerate slovenliness around you. Since you demand this of yourself and other you will always live in a tidy atmosphere."

Gosh. I don't think I could have written a more apt fortune for myself. It covers ALL the bases, don't you think? It's true: I can't tolerate slovenliness.

And here is another weird thing we noticed: all the kids sat around with Toonies in their eyes. We later learned that it was Wear A Loonie Day.

(this may or may not be my child)

Next installment: a serious tour of a perfectly respectable conservatory, with no one acting silly at all. Well, not very silly, anyhow. Or maybe I won't show those photos. Who cares if we all pretended we were Livingstone in the jungle? No plants were injured in the making of this post.

Off The Island

2011-04-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

We left the island for a few days, and followed our Fearless Leader south, where he attended an academic conference. I'm including a photo of a photo from the ferry, showing our route to the mainland along with some typical coastal imagery: bald eagles, herons, killer whales, and starfish (please don't ask me to say "sea star").

The enfants and I didn't attend any conferences, we went to ~~blow all our money at the LEGO store~~ shop and sight-see, although we did stay in the hotel where the conference was held, so on our way to the pool we got to see a lot of strange signs that said things like "Diet & Identity in Shakespeare's England," "Jests in Early Modern Culture," and even "Teaching Our Other Shakespeare" (a title that intrigued me a bit, mostly because I didn't realize that there WAS another Shakespeare). We even got to crowd in elevators with academic types on our way to the pool. There we were in our Crocs and shorts and wet heads and there they were in their nice academic suits. Everyone, I can safely say, was completely bemused.

And while the kids were busy being utterly overwhelmed by the reality of staying at an Expensive Hotel, I was busy capturing images of all the weird things one can see in the US, because it is, there's no doubt about it, so very different from what generally goes on in little old Canada.

First, an artistic sculpture at the border. According to the pair who created it, they hope that it will "create a bit of awareness to the signage landscape" around the border. It's called Non-Sign II.

And there was me thinking it was supposed to evoke a crowd of angry bees around a window. If it were up to me I'd call it Hive Mind. Maybe Angry Hive Mind. Or even Totally Pissed Off Hive Mind II. I can even see a Loony Toons movie in there somewhere, with some furious honky tonk piano music. I guess my signage landscape awareness is lacking somewhat. In fact, up until I googled that sign I wasn't aware that there WAS a signage landscape at the border.

Here are a couple of American children playing Memory Match.

Look closely at their Memory Match cards...paint chips.

Oh, those wacky wacky Americans.

(these may or may not be my children)

A giant green tree amidst the gray cityscape. I looked at this tree every morning, on our way along the Sky Bridges to the mall (there were Sky Bridges from the hotel to the mall, just in case one was too posh to walk amongst the hoi polloi on the street), and every time I looked at it I thought "That tree looks out of place."

Deep thoughts in the morning - c'est moi.

The latest fashions would indicate that we women need to have pink limbs. And batwings. I guess I'm destined to be unfashionable AGAIN this year, because I'm not okay with either, to be honest. Pink is so not my colour and batwings, well, they don't suit anyone.

Except a bat.

Yes, that person IS carrying a sign that says GUNS AND AMMO. He was even standing in front of a GUNS AND AMMO store.

And this is what B-list celebrities do when they move down a tier: throw Birthday Soirées at sports bars. Poor Carmen Electra: going from being married to Dennis Rodman to this. I wondered if this was how she was planning to dress for her Soirée, but then decided that she'd probably wear batwings or something more trendy.

After I took this photo (my kids deserted me in complete embarrassment even though they are too young to know these Former B-List Celebrities) I saw a movie poster with Vin Diesel on it. It looked like a rerun of Too Fast Too Furious...and what do you know but it was. Perhaps he'll attend Carmen's Birthday Soirée too.

Can you see this sign? It says BUS ONLY THIS EXIT. I feel very stupid admitting this, because I pondered it for a very long time, but I never did understand what it meant.

Perhaps it too was a Non-Sign: Non-Bus Stop II.

All this art stuff is way over my head.

And look, American Kleenex talks!

It's going to be there when I'm sad. Isn't that charming? It even signed its name:

Love, tissue.

And finally, for the person who has everything: a chocolate pillow. I can only speculate on what your hair will look like in the morning, but if I had to express an opinion I'd say this can't be a good look. Plus, they are way too small to be a decent pillow.

Tasty, but weird.

Rainy Days in the Greenhouse

2011-04-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

This is what the inside of the greenhouse looked like today. Atmospheric, I grant you, but rather dreary otherwise. At least it's warm enough to turn off the festive Christmas light decor I've got going on in there.

Since we couldn't do any outdoors gardening, well, not without getting excessively muddy in the bargain, FDPG and I decided to take photographs of the little plants in the little greenhouse.

Tomatoes. I keep waiting for them to POP and start growing wildly, but I think it's still a bit on the cold side.

At least, I hope it's still a bit on the cold side. If they are measly wimpy destined-to-be-miserable plants I might cry a bit.

Like my high-tech labels?

Lee Valley - eat your heart out.

Baby spiders are hatching. If you look really closely that blur should turn into a clump of spiders. I can't guarantee anything, so look really hard before emailing me in despair.

We are trailing around the house and yard with little floating spiders all over us today. For some of us it's the charming side effect of having a greenhouse; for others it's a horrible, scary, creepy, and really yucky experience.

Yes, we're all about the heroics. Braving Baby Spiders - that's us. Look at those SCARY little suckers and quake in your boots.
Marigolds (Moonlight Marigold)

Hollyhocks (Peaches 'N' Dreams and Black Knight).

Vague panoramic shot. You're looking at the Butterfly Garden portion of the greenhouse: phacelia, marigolds, calendula, nettles, hollyhocks, liatrus, alyssum, collinsia, sunflowers, leadplant, poppies, clary sage, goldenrod.

The other side are the Vegetable Garden plants: corn salad, purple sprouting broccoli, kale, tomatoes, peppers, pepperoncini, basil, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, gourds, pumpkins, zucchini.

And yes, we do have it cordoned off. Some of us are highly competitive about our plants. And some of us are very irritable when they don't do well.

Dig Earth Grow Food

2011-03-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

But first of all, get your head in the clouds and check out this review of The Cloud-Collector's Handbook, complete with a perfectly gorgeous slide show.

Some links for garden-minded kids (or their parents):

Learn about soil here. And here. If you want printables, click on the Teachers link.

Did you know about the soilfoodweb in your garden? Discover it here. Or see this Canadian site.

Hear about pollinators and how you can help increase their habitats. About bumble bees in particular here.

Free Pollinator Friendly Planting Guides.

Death of an Author

2011-03-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

I should probably thank my children for leading me to the newly late Diana Wynne Jones because without our morning Read Alouds I might never have met her. And that would have been a tragedy. As it was, once we'd found her, she became one of our very favourite writers.

We were first introduced at the library, in the form of an audio CD: The Lives of Christopher Chant. It had a curiously fetching cover, featuring a squished ginger cat looking extremely grumpy. How could we resist?

It was, to use a well-worn phrase - such an original story. It had elements familiar to lots of other books - magic, witches, clever children - but they were combined in such a fabulous way that we thought about them long after the book had been put back on the shelf.

Then we discovered that one of our favourite movies, Howl's Moving Castle, started life as a book, written by - you guessed it - Diana Wynne Jones. The conjunction of Hayao Miyazaki and DWJ seemed charmed, blessed, far too fortuitous to ignore. And you know, Howl the book was even better (should I whisper this?) than Howl the movie. It was populated with wit and disaster and charm and scope, everything a good story should have. Plus, it had really excellent chapter headings, like Chapter Five: Which is far too full of washing. There was also a lot of mysteriously wonderful magic, like Seven League Boots and walking castles and the Witch of the Waste.

We read all the books we could get our hands on, as you can tell from the bookshelf photo. Twenty-four at last count. A lot of reading aloud, you might think, but all I can think is this: we don't have any more books to look forward to.

Which really IS a tragedy.

Seedlings

2011-03-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

Or as one of the kids used to call them: hatchlings.

We've been slowly moving all the little seedlings out into the greenhouse this week, because the grow lights and the heat mats can only go so far in simulating the outside world.

As soon as the little seedlings got out there, they went wild for the humid heat.

Tomato seedlings. Someone asked me for more clarification about transplanting, because apparently I was more obtuse than usual, lol. What I meant was this: transplant your seedlings very gently, then leave them in the shade, or a cool place, for at least 24 hours. Don't subject them to your greenhouse temperatures right away or they will WILT.

Tomatoes post-transplanting. I left them in the basement for the night, then moved them out into the greenhouse. So far they look really strong. I've got Moneymaker, Sungold, Tigerella, Green Zebra, and some seeds from a gorgeous giant plum tomato I grew last year (that I can't OF COURSE remember the name of).

Dominic's sunflower collection. Somehow we've managed to accumulate 7 different types of sunflowers. Beloved by bees and butterflies the world over, too.

Sucked in by advertising? Us?

Surely you jest.

Here's an interesting contrast: the difference a few days can make in the life of a semi-forced rhubarb plant.
Around about the middle of February, or whenever I see the little red nubs of the rhubarb plant start to pop out the ground, I take my terracotta pot and place it over top.

About a week ago, I took the pot off, and as you can see from this shot, the rhubarb looks ever so slightly blanched. This is called forcing. It's not bad for the plant, it just speeds up the ripening.

And here is that mass of blanched rhubarb a few days later. I kid you not - this is less than a week later.

We even picked some and made a crisp out of it last night.

Here's another one for the Weird Plant Stories book:

Dominic planted an avocado seed last summer - in this pot. It spent the summer growing happily, then, when the fall winds started blowing, I put it in the greenhouse just in case (my favourite saying).

I never watered it, and after a while it looked quite dead, but because I am constitutionally unable to throw a plant away, I left it in the greenhouse. Yesterday, when we were examining all the new growth in the other seedlings, I noticed that this avocado wasn't actually dead after all.

We're going to plant it with the lemons, and see what happens.

Another study in contrast: the red primrose is opening up quickly (difference between photos: 6 days).

The three sisters sweet pea pots reclining on a lovely garden bench as is their wont...
Finally, some little anemone blandas, sitting at the base of the clematis, looking picture perfect.

Here Comes The Sun

2011-03-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Look at that girl. It was warm today, though, so no one looked askance at her.

We were out transplanting tomatoes and sweet peas because they had outgrown their little grow-op in the basement. If you want to transplant your little tomatoes do this: put them in the shade, or somewhere cool, rather than back in a baking hot greenhouse. It will lessen the shock.

I even hung some laundry on the deck, and miracle of miracles - it DRIED.

Then I spent the afternoon hammering wood planks into the sagging beds where the bricks were, because, no surprises, the bricks were slumping. Now the beds are sturdy (I was going to say sturdier but they were never sturdy, lol).

Which meant that some of us got to use drills and exciting things like that. Some of us really like drilling holes in wood. Some of us even drilled a hole in an old My Little Pony toothbrush so it could adorn the bean bed (okay, so that was me, it's fun drilling holes in plastic toothbrushes).

And now we're sitting inside, gazing outside, with sun-scorched cheeks. What an excellent day that was.

Dear Worried Reader

2011-03-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

Here's an insightful retort to those of you who criticize Susan Wise Bauer for including stories from the Bible in her Story of the World series.

Read parts 2, 4, and 5, especially. Then try to reflect objectively before you send your next blast to the WTM boards. If only for my sake.

Alternatively, you could write your own history program for kids in 4 books or less, and see how it stands up to random, anonymous criticism from random, anonymous agenda-packing adults.

Omnivores 'R' Us

2011-03-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

My family thinks of itself as omnivorous (listen to me, I make us sound like the Borg, don't I). But it's true: we are fairly wide-ranging eaters when it comes to food and we're all pretty adventurous in our own way. I like to think that we're discriminating omnivores but the truth is some of us (read: me) are far more discriminating than others (read: teenager with a taste for fat and sugar).

In my late teens and early twenties I was a rather militant vegetarian. I gave it up after a while, mostly because it was a lot of work being a vegetarian in the 80's. And then there was the lack of dinner invitations from friends who didn't want me giving the gimlet eye to their salmon (yes, sadly, I was that kind of vegetarian). There wasn't the embarrassment of options there is now - I think the soy bean has been turned into more meat-like products than a cow has, even. It was exhausting being a vegetarian in the 80's. We won't even mention the condition of some of the organic vegetables available in the shops. Let's just say I'd rather have eaten dirt than some of those carrots. Thankfully all that has changed, although my militancy still rears its head now and again.

When Michael Pollan's book first came out in adult form (note that this is the Young Reader's Edition) I tried to read it. I even put it on my iPod. But it was no good - I kept falling asleep every time I'd listen/read. Or gaze out to sea. Or wonder what to have for dinner. Distractions. Once I even wondered what a Tofurkey tasted like, at which point I realized that this book and I would have to part ways, because I can't be thinking about Tofurkeys. It's just TOO weird a food item, even for me.

But that was a while ago, and so, when I came across the Young Reader's Edition, I thought I would read it with Max. He'd really liked Three Cups of Tea, and this seemed a compatible transition. We would discuss, well, whatever it is Michael Pollan writes about (remember, I'd only got past the first sentence at that point). So I bought it and read the first chapter. I don't know how it differs from the adult version, but it is so excellent I'm reading it to all three kids.

During lunch.

Just kidding.

Well, no, not really. Sometimes we ARE eating lunch.

No Tofurkeys though.

But seriously, you must read this to your kids. It's not shocking in the way that Food, Inc is but it is distressing, and it will cause you to gasp at the way we've allowed our food to get so doctored. It will also make you feel more than a little sorry for farmers.

Perhaps it will even inspire people to garden more.

Has Spring Sprung?

2011-03-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

"Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush"
(see the rest of this poem here)

Nothing is so beautiful as spring, particularly when it's been a long winter. And so it was all the more exciting to be out in the garden yesterday, digging and weeding and planting and peeking at all the new growth.

A slide show, you say? Of the new spring growth? ~~I thought you'd never ask!~~ But of course!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin...

Nectarine blossoms. This is a Red Gold nectarine. It has a new friend a few feet away, called Hardy Red nectarine.

Violets in the grass.

Pockets of amethyst in emerald.

Miniature daffodils,

nodding,

nodding,

nodding.

The first hint of a red primrose, peeking through. This is a lovely little number with a yellow centre.

Spotted Pulmonaria. I love this plant so much that I bought a red version last fall, called Raspberry Splash. It's a workhorse of a plant — blooming early in the spring and continuing well on into summer. And that delicate soft blue is just plain fabulous.

Helleborus. It's funny - this plant looks perfectly disreputable all summer, but in the late winter and early spring it comes into its own. Redemption time, I guess.

This looks weird (and slightly creepy) I admit, but it's a cool way to force rhubarb: you put a terracotta pot over it in late winter, mound up the straw, and when you pull off the pot in spring look what's underneath: early rhubarb!

And finally, what you've all been waiting for...

Lemon blossoms!

An enchanting smell if there ever was one.

But wait, there's more!

Lemons.

And this concludes your tour for today.

Happy spring, all!

This & That

2011-03-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Here's our newest read aloud. It arrived via an English friend of mine, who was here very briefly and was surprised that I'd never heard of it.

When she was young it was her favourite book. And before she left, she dropped off a copy she'd found in a used book shop. This is how our copy looks: dark green hardcover with a ship on the high seas, published in 1906. Arthur Rackham illustrations. As you might imagine it is a lovely thing to hold in your hands.

We started the first chapter (Weland's Sword) this morning. I was slightly concerned that it might be too young for Max, but once we got past the beginning, I knew it would be alright. The language of these old stories is always so, so, well, so beautiful: it's complicated and poetic and nuanced and educated in ways that so many modern books aren't. They drop references we've never learned and tuck in all sorts of sly humour. If you don't believe me, crack open Peter Pan. That's another one for the Impressive Old Books pile.

In other news:

—I knew there was a reason I bought that Pancake Pen at Williams-Sonoma (my favourite wildly over-priced kitchen store).

Shamrock pancakes!

They were even green.

For the first time in 3 years Max the Teenager ate them, then said, very profoundly "they taste like normal pancakes." Gosh, he's getting smarter and smarter every day, isn't he? (sheila breathes a sigh of relief, remembering many a scorned green egg tipped down the garbage)

—the spring might actually be arriving here on the Wet West Coast. It was the wettest, coldest winter we've had these past 4 years. Rain is very boring. I realize that constant snow can be boring too, but the puddles in my lawn are REALLY exasperating me right about now. Dominic and I are itching to get his Butterfly Mudpuddling Garden happening.

—there has been no looting in Japan. I find this a most impressive fact, even as all our hearts break for what they are going through right now. Too sad.

—we had more rounds of Public Speaking in 4-H and the kids are on to the next round. Does the fun ever stop? I have decided that Public Speaking is a Good Thing. It teaches essay writing, pronunciation, posture, and grace in one fell swoop.

—check out the big greenhouse at Martha's house. I've clicked on each and every picture twice. With envy. That is SOME greenhouse, Martha.

Photocopies & Fingerprints

2011-03-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Last week my poor beleaguered printer started faltering, which should have come as no surprise given its age (9 years), but I was still horrified when I shone a bright light into its innards: there seemed to be a lot of messy inky areas where there had once been clear plastic walls. I couldn't tell if this was because of me and my ink-refilling methods or just the fact that it is a very old printer, so I did what any Jane Austen Heroine would do: said a silent prayer, girded my emotional loins, and steadied myself for the worst. The next day the colour ink cartridge ~~stopped eating~~ refused refilling.

A couple of nights later Richard and I were in the Super Duper New Walmart near us (which is so industrial-looking we all hate to go there now) looking for another ink cartridge ~~for me to ruin~~ and we noticed that a new printer was only slightly more expensive than a new colour ink cartridge. So we did what any sensible, momentarily child-free couple experiencing the unusual sensation of being child-free would do: we bought the printer instead of the ink cartridge. It was a giddy sensation.

Then we brought it home, where our spendthrift ways created absolute chaos. Max was simultaneously shocked and thrilled that we'd actually BOUGHT something (we are apparently boringly cheap); Dominic was delighted that we bought something NEW; and Katie was thrilled that I'd come home to rescue her from the tedium of her materialistic brothers.

Tragically, when I took to Amazon to check reviews on our new purchase, they weren't very good. They were okay, but not great enough to make me want to keep it. The next night, we returned it. "Is there something wrong with it?" asked the girl at Walmart. "I don't know - you tell me," replied my sometimes-challenged-about-returning-things-to-stores mate, whereupon I kicked him under the table and said "No, nothing, we just want one that doesn't use so much ink." "Oh," said she, "this is the second one I've had returned today."

Great.

Eventually, after scouring Amazon for reviews, then scouring the stores around me for those very printers, I found one I liked, at a price I liked, and with reviews I liked. Even more exciting, it photocopies, scans, and looks very cool. What's not to like? Wait, I lie: it does have one fault: It's very shiny and very black, which means that it is a perfect fingerprint magnet. And given that I am close to the bottom of the list when it comes to World's Most Amazing Housekeepers, this creates havoc in my life in terms of its Reposing Glossily On The Shelf potential.

Other than that I love it.

Goddesses In Our Midst

2011-03-01T08:41:00.001-08:00

Did anyone watch the Oscars the other night? I did. There's something strangely fascinating about watching all those dresses and suits and bodies and hair styles wandering down the red carpet, dispensing their pearls of idiotic wisdom to anyone who asks. I know, I don't sound very worshipful about it all, do I. That's because I'm not. Not since I hit Old Codgerdom, anyhow. I used to love these shows when I was a kid because they were so over the top. Weird dresses and witty, slightly drunk film stars being, well, witty, slightly drunk film stars. It was all so gloriously decadent to my teenage self. Now it seems the men all eke out the same bland pleasantries, while the 20-something women look identical: coltishly skinny, highly made up, slightly manic look in the eye. They even dress the same - nothing remotely Bjorkish or Cher-ish in this politically correct wasteland (don't ask me to mention Madonna because it makes me cringe). The only thing still the same is the cigarette smoking, except nowadays everyone pretends they DON'T smoke. Dull dull dull.

The show this past week-end was a bit on the ho-hum side, I regret to report, after the imitation-Billy Crystal opening montage. James Franco wavered between a visual tic that rendered him unable to look the camera in the eye and acting just plain bored. I wanted to slap his ego more than once, and I'm sure Anne Hathaway did as well, judging from her desperate overcompensation. The one bright spot in the evening was when Kirk Douglas tottered on stage (tottering not because of his heels but because of his age) and teased out his moment in the fading Hollywood sun by making everyone wait while he clowned around a bit. It was sweet and charming and light-hearted, exactly how a show like this SHOULD be. There's a lesson to be made here, a lesson about Taking Oneself Too Seriously, but it's such an obvious one I don't think I need to make it.

Then of course there was the pre-show. Usually it's the most interesting bit. This is the moment when the Hollywood glitterati get to totter, stumble, trip, or glide along the red carpet (depending on who's done what beforehand, as well as what one is wearing, and perhaps of course how little one has eaten beforehand which affects one's tottering ability), and brave the reporters. When we lived near LA the hosts of this segment were the style reporters of the local LA television shows, and they tended to be excellent purveyors of glee and gossip. They were also loud and excitable in that way American reporters do so well (we Canadians are a buttoned-up lot). Now I live in the Pacific Northwest, where things of the Hollywood Ilk aren't treated with much reverence, and we had Seattle news anchors dispensing the action. No offense, but it added one more layer of dull. Of course, I might have been negatively influenced by Randolph Duke, the Style Host of the pre-show (who will be forever etched in my memory as the victim of a botched plastic surgery procedure years ago). He was a much less bitchy than he used to be, but what he lacked in vitriol he made up for with misplaced adulation. "She's a goddess!" he would boom every time someone under 30 walked by him. "A GODDESS!" I counted 15 goddesses in the first hour.

The first time he said this, FDPG darted into the room, eyes afire.

To FDPG, a goddess is something like this. Remote, dangerous, possessed of alarming magical powers or blue skin. Sporting several limbs, even. They wave snakes and wear necklaces of teeth.

Goddesses are capable of blasting holes in the sides of buildings when they're annoyed. They are bigger than life. Forbiddingly beautiful. They rampage up and down the Nile, their eyes shooting out flames in their fury. They rip the heads off mortals who anger them.

FDPG was highly disappointed to see that the "goddess" in question was not Isis. Or Sekhmet. Or even Kali. This goddess was a slight dark-haired girl in a pale dress. And she was wobbling along in sky-high heels, smiling uneasily. "Someone give that girl a lesson in deportment!" I wanted to shout, but I didn't, because that WOULD have been curmudgeonly. Besides, I was worried she was going to fall over. But really, when one wears 6" heels one really should know how to walk without looking as though one's knees can't bend, don't you think?

"What makes that girl a goddess?" FDPG asked me. "Has she got super powers?" She peered suspiciously at the television, wondering no doubt how a skinny girl like that came by super powers. I didn't like to tell FDPG this, but my suspicions were that that girl's super powers had less to do with innate talent and more to do with looks and a willingness to suck up to the bigger super powers of Hollywood. Unsavory stuff, really. We both watched that particular goddess weave her way down the red carpet and FDPG sighed at the lack of drama.

No flames. No shredded puny humans. Nothing.

According to Randolph Duke there were an awful lot of goddesses at the Oscars. It was rather alarming. He even told one or two of them how goddess-like they were, and I was delighted to observe how they took his compliments. Not a one seemed abashed. They all evidently agreed with him. Good thing no one asked FDPG what she thought.

But none of them looked like this.

Or this, although, come to think of it, a few WERE sporting the same, rather globular look about the bust line.

One of the perks of being a goddess, I guess.

Random Twits

2011-02-24T20:45:00.000-08:00

# I ROCK at Teen Jeopardy.

# Socca is my new favourite food, especially when slathered with pesto. (Note to self: grow more basil next year, pesto supply is dwindling)

# Remind me again why the old-fashioned Christmas lights went out of style? The ones heating my greenhouse are at least 40 years old - and they work just fine, as opposed to the 2 year old set of LED lights that are highly temperamental.

# Living on a hill has its upsides when it snows: built-in sledding potential. Haven't seen the twins in a few hours...

# Why do the twins like to lie in the snow and pretend they are dead? It's very disconcerting.

# Public Service Announcement: The people at Xerxes have a new book out, called Attracting Native Pollinators.

# Ron Sexsmith was interviewed by Jian Gomeshi today and wonder of wonders but I just HAPPENED to be listening to it. What a wonderfully gloomy interview. Ron Sexsmith rocks. Buy his new album so he can afford to take his band on tour, please. LOL

# Downton Abbey has announced its new season, with new characters. I await it with bated breath (emphasis on the bated bit).