My Goofy Valentine

I was checking this blog out for some Valentine's Day ideas for the kids, and came across a site that offered free 'bag toppers.' So, me being all about anything FREE or DOWNLOADABLE, I put in for a download. And today, with our friends, we made these.

We used the heart-shaped chocolate mold from Michaels, then little plastic bags, and finally these bag toppers. When I doled them out to the kids one boy (who hadn't been paying us much mind) asked where we'd bought them. We tried to tell him we'd just made them but it took a while before he decided to believe it. They looked amazing. Thanks Living Locurto. You are awesome.

 

There were two types of bag topper: one was a pink owl and the other was a blue dinosaur. We filled them with Candy Melts from Michaels in white and pink (I mixed them together to make a marbled pinkish-white so that we had three kinds in each bag).

Garden Thursday

 Well, I don't know what happened here but I thought I'd posted this yesterday but it appears as though I didn't. Can you spell G-L-I-T-C-H?


So, what's new with your garden?

We have had the most spectacular spell of warm, dry weather these last few weeks, which the Olympic organizers have no doubt been completely deflated by, but being a good little Canadian I say:

SORRY!

(because as we know most Canadians are self-effacing and polite to the point of idiocy).

But (sheila smirks a little here in the way that only self-effacing Canadians can) that  warm dry spell allowed me to do an awful lot of gardening. I transplanted roses from Totally In The Way Places to Much Better Now They Are A Sort Of Hedge Places. I transplanted mock oranges because they were in the way of my beloved interloper Rosamundi and seeing as how history and me are tight Rosamundi won out. Besides, the mock orange is in a Truly Better Place now. Don't feel bad for it. I sank my Rose of Sharon into the ground even, it was so balmy. And I watched a lot of plant action. If you're going to do this be sure to have a lot of bone meal on hand: it really helps the transplanting process.

We went for a walk up the road yesterday. It's incredibly mellow in the woods up on the hill. I think what struck me more than anything was the soft voluptuous colour of the vegetation. There's no winter kill. No pathetic "I'm doing my best, sorry I'm a Canadian plant I have to apologize" kind of growth. It's all lush and green and moist.

I have to include this picture because it's so odd. I examined it from several angles but I never really did figure out whether it was one tree growing out of another tree or one tree growing out of its horribly mutilated other half. It was, I confess, that hard to tell. I even had my kids climb up and they couldn't readily tell. And one of them had just had two teeth removed forcibly from his mouth so that shows you how dedicated a Garden Thursday Correspondent I am.

And no, I would prefer you didn't speculate as to what kind of mother I am.







Had some fortuitous finds in the second hand store this week:

This is one book in a series Rodale put out a while back: Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening. I say a while back because I bought their "Vegetable Garden" book ages ago and while it's a great book, this one on pests and diseases is even better: great colour photographs and useful advice on getting rid of all manner of pests.
The other book I bought was one of those The _____Expert by Cavendish Press. In this case it was The Rose Expert by Dr D.G. Hessayon. I like this series a lot (I already have The Tree and Shrub Expert) because it's so technical. There are lists on pruning, leaf problems, pest issues, light requirements, and more. I might sound mildly obsessive but if you start delving into the world of roses you will soon discover that they have very specific pruning requirements (among other things): if you prune some varieties you will unwittingly be pruning off next year's blooms. It reminds me of when I discovered that apples come in tip-bearing and non-tip-bearing varieties, and that despite having been a fairly fanatical gardener for many years prior, I was blisslessly unaware that there WAS such a thing as a tip-bearing apple tree. How about you?

Here's a fun read I have out from the library (now if only I could reinvent my wardrobe):

There are thousands of books on this variation in the library, but I was more taken with this one than most others because it took several "reinventions" step by step and included a number of photographs of the reinvention aspect. I like seeing these kinds of overhauls a lot: it's one thing to think about changing things in the garden but it's another thing entirely to actually be out there doing it. And some of these changes (installing paths, remodelling beds) require such complications as leveling, sand underlays, gravel sides, and tamping down, too, so it's worth seeing someone skilled doing it before using up a lot of time and energy. Trust me on this one. I've expended a lot of time and energy doing things one year only to uproot and change everything COMPLETELY the next year. See beginning of this post if you don't believe me.

Now, get on with those Olympics! Go, Canucks!

Wednesday Ramblings

It's been a bit of a dry week for blogging, hasn't it? Some days I have fodder and no time. Other days I have time and no fodder. Then there are the days when I have both but no impetus.

What is today?

Hard to say. I have fodder but I am lacking inspiration today, for some reason. So are the kids: everywhere I go they follow me, fiddling with things and asking very random questions. "Settle down to something," I say. But they can't seem to settle. Neither can I, really. Maybe we all need a walk.

I watched Richard chase the kids around the house this morning, with the toilet plunger in front of him, croaking "Exterminate! Exterminate!" and thought "Ha! Funny. Very blogable."

The reason we needed the toilet plunger in the first place was not blogable, alas.

Another inspiring moment was when we found the entirety of series 4 of Dr Who in the library. We have watched almost all of it. There is something incredibly addictive about Dr Who and his quirky universe. We're all in love with him. Even FDPG the Highly Critical is in love with him. But he really is wonderful, so who can blame her? I watched Silence in the Library and wished I was Alex Kingston. She knows the Doctor's name! Does Russell T. Davies? Or Steven Moffat? Richard finds my new Doctor Obsession rather unnerving. "You're like those geeks we see on the internet," he says, worriedly. Seeing as he has his own Extreme Geekiness Thing going on (but obviously doesn't realize it), I suggested that he leave me to my worship of the Long Brown Coat. And get started on my Tardis Greenhouse.

I made a birthday gift for a friend of FDPG's on the weekend and thought "I must take a picture of this before I forget what it looked like." That too was blogable. Now I will have a record for when I can't remember what colours this little tea cup was. It had a saucer to go with it but since I didn't get a picture of that I have now forgotten what it looked like...

It is made of Sculpey. Painted with acrylics. Sprayed with a couple of layers of urethane. Breakability factor? On a scale of one to ten, with ten being indestructible and one being flimsy as all get-out, I'd say this was about a three. I have three wounded homemade Greek vase reproductions as my witnesses. Nice, but not for the under six crowd.

Another reason I feel so unsettled is that I had a disturbing interaction with someone in our DEL program and thought "This is one of the pitfalls to signing up for school money: small-minded officious women people who don't understand where their boundaries leave off and where mine begin." When I have these kind of encounters I am always torn between saying something or letting it go and forgetting about it. Letting it go is one thing, but it's hard to forget, isn't it. I often wonder where these kinds of people get their inspiration from. Clearly we are not drinking from the same spring.

If only I had a sonic screwdriver.

iPAD? i dON'T eVEN hAVE an iPHONE

Why Do Tigers Need Tails?*

The USPS is issuing Calvin & Hobbes stamps! You'll need to scroll down a ways to get to the Sunday Funnies bit where they mention it.

Now, if only I can get someone to mail us letters from the US in July...



* Ps: Because they're just a necktie for their butt.

Garden Thursday

The garden centres are starting to wake up a bit here, which means that all kinds of new varieties are showing up. I saw an amazing double hellebore yesterday, which I was going to buy until I saw that it was $24.95. I mean, I like hellebores but really. Who buys these things? Oh wait, I know: people with lots of money. Right. Well, that's not moi. I am a Bargain Gardener. Today's column is Bargain Gardening. 

This is a good time to buy new plants for your garden: now is when all the nurseries sell off their stock cheap, to make way for new spring items. You can sometimes even barter with the manager. I've done this a few times, because I want the plant but I don't want to pay full price for it. And that's how I ended up with this Rose of Sharon at long last. There was the charming but rudely overpriced Blue Bird, which I had been vaguely coveting, sitting there looking particularly well shaped, but the garden centre had removed their All Deciduous Stock 30% Off signs. I was feeling rashly ebullient, so I went over the manager and said "Would you sell me this Rose of Sharon I have been vaguely coveting for the past 10 months just because it's a weird shade of blue and I love weird shades of blue and give me a 50% discount because it's old stock?" And he said "Sure!" Then we both stared at each other as if shocked at our own reactions. There were two garden staff near us listening and they too looked shocked. The woman at the till said "You sure got a good deal." I tried to smile bashfully but I'm not very good at bashful.

Which brings me to another aspect of Bargain Gardening: Garden Centre Memberships. This is when a garden centre has a Clever Marketing Manager who is very good at getting gardeners to part with their money and so comes up with schemes to make it look like the gardener is getting a Super Good Deal when all they are really doing is spending yet more money at the Garden Centre. Sometimes these deals work in the favour of the gardener. The deal is usually this: the gardener pays $10 for a Lifetime Membership Complete With Coupons For Massively Expensive Purchases. Or something like that. I bought one at the local Garden Centre when we first moved here because I knew I would be buying fruit trees and shrubs and seeds, and the coupon deal worked in my favour but mostly because a) I bought 5 fruit trees from them, and b) they also have a points system which translates into further discounts on future purchases. All for ten bucks. 

Anyhow, after I'd used up my points, obtained the discount, and noticed that they'd mismarked the Rose of Sharon so that it was actually $15 cheaper than the tag said it was, I only paid about $7 for a two gallon shrub. High five! (no I didn't really do that - I do have some dignity - I waited until I got into the car)

I also bought a 50% off rosy red yarrow for the butterflies ($4), a scented Viola odorata to match the unscented but lovely marbled Freckles violet I bought before I knew some violets actually smelled good ($2) and I bought two roses. 

I've never been a rose person. They were nice and had interesting colours and all, but they never grabbed me the way herbs and other flowering perennials did. And then I spent six years living in Southern California, where roses really grow well there, and had a garden with a lot of donated roses in it (we lived in university housing, where people come and go and rose plants changed hands frequently). I also discovered that I liked roses. For one thing, nothing looks quite like a big scented rose floating in a clear bowl of water. It's enchanting. So when we bought this house I started accumulating roses. I bought a few. I was given a few. I transplanted a few from wild places. And some were already here in the yard. But it wasn't until I found a book on heritage roses and their history that I started getting interested in them. Turns out the ones I bought were all the wrong ones, too: they (hybrid teas) were roses bred for shows, not to mention needing sprays and pesticides to look their best. They had fancy schmancy names but gosh they are divas in the garden. I like a diva as much as the next person (I currently live with a 13 year old diva) but I am very anti-chemical, and this, sadly, is not a fortuitous combination. My roses don't look bad, per se, but they don't look like the photos in English Country Garden, either.

Anyhow, I won't go into the complicated and weirdly gripping history of the rose, but I will say that I have decided to move into Ye Olde Rose territory, for a couple of reasons: they have massive hips so I can make medicines and jams with them and they are easy care roses. My real reason though is this: I like the idea of having living history in the yard. The Rosa Mundi, for example: it was named after a mistress of Henry II. It was grown by the Greeks and the Romans. It was one of the roses in the medicinal gardens of the monks long long ago. I like that I've got a piece of apothecary history.

Here is the other rose I bought. It's also a Rugosa. I bought it because, according to the nursery stock person, it's a spectacular deep pink rose with giant hips and plum-red foliage in the fall. It's named after the son of a former Prime Minister of Canada, a son who died in an avalanche a while back. The nursery owner was an uncle and developed this rose in memory of his nephew. It's called Michel Trudeau. A portion of the sales proceeds go towards avalanche rescues.

In other news, this balmy spring weather has encouraged me to get out and unearth the brickwork I so painstakingly placed around my mini-beds. This is the Herb Garden. The Herb Garden before it's Grand Renovation, due to occur in a few weeks from now. Which reminds me: don't plant more than one fennel plant in your garden. They spread. Really fast. And they have really long roots.

Here is a very small picture because it's very blurry and we garden photographers have some shreds of dignity to maintain. I couldn't very well feature a giant blurry shot of something, could I? Wait, don't answer that.

This is Sheila's Attempt To Make A Straight Brick Basil Planter. My Last Attempt looked like a wave. It was not even. Or straight. This one, as Max so aptly described it, looks way better than the last one, which looked like crap. (was that a compliment? I'm not sure)




And finally, this is a picture of the screening I had to put on the back of greenhouse window. We had a rat visiting it every night, despite the fact that there are no stairs up to our deck. He was climbing the stucco and eating all my lettuce plants. Argh. This is the irritating side of gardening: the things that one has to combat in order to get a harvest.

Bad rat.

In Lieu of Candles...