Rewarding Awards & Random Information

It's my week for getting charming blog awards. And those awards went a long way in making this otherwise irksome week fade a bit. Irksome, you ask? Even with such wonders as ComicCon going on? Yes, sadly, even with (considering I live nowhere near San Diego it's not that surprising). I spent far too much time in the bright hot sun this week attempting to hook up my watering system only to discover that several of my electronic timers were LEAKING. Ugh. Stupid expensive pieces of crap. I wielded pliers. I bought rubber washers. I stood and peered fiercely even. And I might have cursed a bit. All to no avail. Leak, leak, leak. Drip, drip, drip.

But that was another moment in time. Let's turn our gaze instead to the fun side of the week. First it was Suji from funschooling giving me a Blog With Substance award. I am thrilled with this, Suji, thank you so much, although I don't think I am as substantial a blogger as you are. Substantially silly, maybe...

As per the terms of this award, I am supposed sum up my blog motivation, philosophy, and experience in 10 words. Ten words? Who thought up these terms? We bloggers are wordy people. Is this a sort of haiku contest designed to torment me?

Okay. Let's see.

What motivates me to blog? I like telling stories.

What is my blog philosophy? I don't think I have one. Oh wait, I think I do: while I am an opinionated person, the Victorian in me likes to keep it polite. I am unable to write rude without at least a little bit of wit. It's one of the more Unforgivable Story Teller Crimes, in my book.

What is my blog experience? Mostly great. I love reading other people's blogs. I find so much inspiration in other people's blogs. It has expanded the fun quotient of our homeschooling world immeasurably. And enabled me to enjoy this temporary incarnation as a mother more than I probably would have otherwise.

So. Ten words. Hmm. You know, I'm going to steal a line from Max, aged 3. Whenever he did anything inexplicable, like, say, tossing a Hot Wheels car off our balcony, and I'd ask him why he did it, he'd say "Because I can!" very spritely. It was such an odd yet reasonable answer I never had a retort. Well, other than "How about you go get that Hot Wheels car?" So here is my summation in ten words or less:

I blog because I can.

So thanks again, Suji, you Substantial Blogger you.

But wait! There's more! Later this week Subadra from Library of Books, Links & More who passed a Versatile Blogger my way. Thanks Subadra! You have one of the more versatile blogs out there, so it gladdens my heart to get this from you. Not to mention the fact that I too love green. This is a particularly nice green, isn't it?

According to the terms of this award, I am supposed to list 7 things about myself. Seven things you don't already know. Hmm. Other than outing myself as a bit of a Victorian? Here goes...

1. I love show tunes. When I was in grade 6 a shiver of thievery ran through the girls in my class: to be considered cool one had to shoplift something and bring it to class to show the Head Mean Girls. Mostly jeans or nail polish or slutty bras. Now, let me preface this by saying that while I was fairly confident that nothing would give me Good Standing with these girls, there was something I really wanted and this seemed like a reasonable philosophical moment to do something about it. Under torture, right? Well, torture of a sort. So when the moment was right I stole my coveted object. But I didn't show it to the Head Mean Girls, because even way back then I knew they would not know quite what to do with me and my Stolen Object. So I took it home and hid it under my bed, when I wasn't using it, of course. That acquisition was probably my best memento of Life In School with those Mean Girls. I still have it, in fact: a cassette tape of the soundtrack to Bob Fosse's Cabaret, with Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli. That was some movie.

2. When I was a little girl I went through a stage when I insisted on eating my meals out of a bowl on the floor, as if I were a dog. I even used to bark and run around on all fours. A couple of years later, I came across the book Harriet the Spy and took to calling myself Harriet and insisting on tomato sandwiches for lunch every day at school. Intriguingly my parents indulged me in these pursuits, although I'm sure the idea that I wanted to grow up to be a dog worried them somewhat. But they needn't have worried: I'd rather be a cat any day.

3. I am afraid of wolf spiders. So afraid that I can taste my fillings when I see one. I turn into one of those stupid shrieking women when one scutters across our floor - ask my kids. Ugh.

4. I am extremely selective about the TV I watch but to the average outsider it looks as though I like weird (and sometimes bad) TV. First, I like the kids show Arthur. I've even been known to watch it when my kids aren't around, although I am not very sympathetic with the parenting philosophies of Arthur's mum and dad (they let DW get away with too much, IMO). I hope one day to be a guest on this show, just like Yo Yo Ma, Art Garfunkle, Jack Prelutsky, Mr Rogers, Click and Clack, Alex Trebek, and even Neil Gaiman, even if I have to be a moose or a skunk. I also like this rather cringe-inducing show called Flipping Out, mostly because of the truly repulsive central figure, a diva of a man I want to smack on the bum and send to his room he's so rude. I say I like it but I've only seen it three or four times; perhaps if I watched it more I'd find him too obnoxious. Finally, when we were living at my parents and renovating this house I became rather obsessed with Family Jewels. It features an aging Gene Simmons, a man I always thought of as a tragic relic from Bygone Sexist Days of Big Dumb Rock Bands. Which he is (remember KISS?). But he's also a very devoted dad. I was mildly astounded that such a sexist relic could be a nice dad.

5. I love action movies. One of the best things about being a parent, IMO, is the fact that I can attend all sorts of silly action movies under the guise of being forced to by my children (2012, anyone?). And yes, I do consider Lara Croft Tomb Raider high art.

6. I am a compartmentalizer. It's pathological, I think. I am firm about not having aspects of my life intersect with other aspects. Richard thinks I am a tad neurotic but I consider myself merely careful.

7. I don't like holding babies. Most women I know relish this kind of activity, but I do not. Yes, I spent many a happy hour mauling my own kids but put me in a room with a newborn and a bunch of women and I'll be the one crouching in the corner hoping like hell no one asks me if I want to hold the baby.

So there you go. Perhaps things you're better off not knowing about me. But now I am supposed to pass these awards on to other people. So let me say this: all of you who read this blog can consider yourself passed one of these two awards. Because I think you all deserve something for having read this far, and well, I didn't say this in my 7 things but I am a bit of a voyeur and I'd really love to see your 7 things.

Randomness

Overheard at dinner last night:

Boy2: Can we put a spiral staircase off this deck? How about a slide? It could go right into the pool!

(for the record, deck is approximately 20' off the ground - it is a very high deck)

Girl: Only 17 more days until my birthday. Sixteen if we don't count today. I love avocado.

Boy1: Why do we pay for internet? Look, my Touch says there are two unsecured connections around here. How can you like that gross green stuff?

Father: (eats dinner silently)

Mother: I need a haircut. This is the albatross of having short hair. It needs cutting all the time. I have hag hair. I hate having hag hair. I'm poofing.

Post Script

I meant to mention this in my post last night but forgot. Then this morning, while I was outside getting another look at my pruning work from yesterday I remembered.

If you're planning a summer party later in the summer, in, say, 4 weeks from now, for some smaller people having a Fancy Multi-Cupcaked Birthday Party Extravaganza and you want all your almost-at-the-end-of-their-blooming-period perennials like balloon flowers, campanula, daisies, roses, digitalis, and even bergamot to be covered in gorgeously unrestrained blossoms for said party...well, this would be the time to prune them back rather severely.

Not Mommy Dearest pruning (nasty, brutish, & short), more a Super Nanny pruning (firm, loving, & eminently sensible).

This method works well on perennials but isn't always as dramatic with plants like pansies. Maybe it's my pruning method, but they take longer to come back with blooms after a prune.

Garden Thursday

I was out working in the garden for the first time since I injured my back and gosh it felt good. My back is still a little sore (I think I tore something) but I hate watching weeds and grass smother my paths and plants. And watching the tomatoes topple over and turn into crawling things drives me mad, especially when I can't wade in there and stake them before their stems take to those new bendy shapes. Plus the raspberries were in a heap on the ground where the slugs and ants would be able to eat the berries without any trouble whatsoever. I do not willingly feed slugs or ants.

The shasta daisies were in a similar heap but then, they always seem to flop on the ground after a week or two aloft. They are the most relaxed of plants, perhaps a bit too relaxed. I generally end up staking them in secret and mysterious ways (who likes to see my green plastic string snaking all over the place?) but even then they manage to look apathetic about being staked.

I am slowly uprooting the pansies. They really fade when the summer heats up, but the last couple of years, what with us being more permanent about our abodes, I've been cropping them back and leaving them in flats in a shady place. They spend the hot part of the summer growing and come fall I can replant them. Now I have some mixed lettuces in this basket. Or is that letti?


Here is a great combination of bright colours: peeking yarrow (Red Velvet), woolly speedwell (Blue Carpet), some Anise-Hyssop (Honey Bee Blue)and goldenrod.

These plants are the most incredible bee magnet. I suspect the goldenrod of having Super Plant Powers: there was one clump last year and this year there are at least four.



One of the sweet peas I bought this year. I think it's called Blue Foam but since I lost the seed packet somewhere in the Busy Busy Baby Snake Bed and I'm not going to dig around in there to find it even if you cry and beg me. You're going to have to suffer through my disaster of a memory bank, which is really warped from too much Horrible Histories viewing. I have a secret, well, fine, it's not all that secret, crush on one of the actors in the Horrible Histories so when the kids say "Can we watch a Horrible Histories?" I generally answer "Sure!" with far too much alacrity.

Wait, how did this topic come up? I don't get the connection at all. Oh right, snakes. Snakes in the garden.

???



Okay, moving on...

Here are some crocosmia - Lucifer. These particular ones are taller than me. I like the arching angle the flower head has.







Lysimachia clethroides: Gooseneck loosestrife. You can see by the sweep of the flower head why it's called "gooseneck." This plant is a little on the invasive side but it's so lovely and robust in the hot sun that I don't mind. I just haul out a few stalks here and there and we're both happy. Besides, white is such a great colour in a perennial border - it frames everything else so cleanly and brightly.



This is a poppy - a Breadseed poppy. I bought them because they seemed a bit of a novelty but now I'm wondering how the seeds differ from other poppy seeds. The flower is pretty but otherwise unremarkable. I prefer the more dramatic raggedy red ones. I'd even prefer the blue one I bought last year but it seems to have died on me again, the silly thing. A pox on wimpy poppies!












This time of year is always so dramatically lush. Here's a combination of potatoes, bulb fennel and second year parsley in the very back. I've had to really work on the watering in the section of the yard, because the soil is so heavy. I've mulched it with straw but it still dries to rock when I'm not looking.













A Louisebonne pear. This poor old tree has really suffered in my garden: first I planted it near the neighbour's juniper bush (host to rust) which promptly infected the tree with rust. The leaves were covered in horrible orange blotches. Then they all fell off. So did the three teeny little pears that were attached to some of those leafy places. I took one of the blotchy orange leaves into the garden centre and they all chortled rather rudely. "Who told you to plant a pear?" they asked me incredulously. "That's the WORST kind of fruit tree to grow here. Rust is everywhere! I bet your neighbours all have juniper hedges, don't they?" I felt too foolish to admit that I hadn't actually looked to see if anyone had junipers (who wants a shrub when they could have fruit trees and vegetable patches and flowers?), or that I'd only bought it so I could hang a partridge in it come December and give our Christmas habits some extra levity, so I took the spray bottle of stupid-lame-organic-rust-inhibitor and slunk away. Then I got home and felt even more foolish because there weren't any leaves left to spray. Sob.

That fall I moved it down the slope a bit but that area was too shady and it looked on the edge of its expiry date. This spring I moved it to the end of the brick vegetable garden, where it seems to still have a touch of rust but nothing quite as dramatic as last year's case. And there are, wonder of wonders, some pears on it. There is one there. Plump as a pear.

Look! Peas! Hanging very greenly, don't you think? I like me a pea that can hang so very, err, greenly.

(stop it before you get rude, Sheila)







Finally, we have a tomatillo. I like growing these - no one ever seems to know what they are or what you can do with them and they look like weird mutant vegetables with that hollow green husk. I also like how the light shines through them.

They are, unlike myself, extremely photogenic. I have tomatillo envy, methinks.










Here was one of my other projects today. The twins are gearing up for their birthday. They've decided on a Cupcake Extravaganza. That's right, I'm making enough cupcakes to populate a small country. And that's not all: we're going to attempt LEGO heads and bricks on these cupcakes, as well as model pea pods and whole carrots from the garden, and maybe a few sunflowers too (a la Hello Cupcake!). There might even be fondant involved. And sanding sugar. Not to mention a number of trips to the Martha Stewart website, because, as we all know, Martha has probably done it before. Plus, she includes a lot of pictures in her tutorials...

In the spirit of the venture I made a chocolate layer cake this afternoon. I know, it has nothing to do with fondant, cupcakes, or models of peas and carrots, or even an icing sunflower, but it's a sort of test drive for my baking skills. Right?

Right.

Making Ice Cream Sandwiches

I posted a sort of tutorial on my food blog today. Yeah, right, like anyone really needs to read a tutorial about squishing ice cream between cookies...

Garden Recipes

I posted a few recipes for chocolate zucchini cake, cucumber relish, and peach pie filling for those of you with gardens and heaps of produce to deal with in the near future.

Well, it wasn't Saint Patrick's Day today, but it wasn't until we went into Home Despot this afternoon and the teller we passed said "Hey! You guys all match!" that we noticed. I think I should get Quick Wit points here because when the teller said that I tossed back "We plan our wardrobes every morning!" and we all laughed merrily, me without knowing what the heck she was talking about, her no doubt thinking I was a total weirdo parent. Then I went striding off to where the shortie hoses were kept and glanced back to make sure everyone was with me. It was then that the penny dropped.

We were all wearing green shirts. Even Max the Teenager. When I pointed it out he moaned. "Why didn't I bring a hoodie?!" he groaned, "we look so dorky!"

To be honest even I felt kind of dorky. We were the Slacker Von Trapps.

Green, green, and more green. The funny thing was when we came home: no one changed.

Now that's weird.

Sleepovers

The twins are having a sleepover. They like doing this; they usually sleep in FDPG's room. Dominic tosses down a few denizens from Cushion Land (tonight he's using Big Blue, Little Brother and Big Brother) and uses them as his air mattress.

I crept down a few times when I heard raised voices, just to see what they were up to, because they can get into some pretty heated arguments. And this is what I heard:

(the first time) "Okay, Dominic, here is your math quiz for tonight. You have to do all of that page." FDPG had found an old Math Smart book of Max's in her desk drawer and was giving Dominic a test. She later gave him a grammar quiz.

(the second time) Great shrieks as FDPG loses a tooth. Thundering footsteps as they both race to be the first to announce the news. Tooth is wrapped in tinfoil and placed in a special spot, awaiting an appearance by the Tooth Fairy. "OMG," says FDPG, "I can't believe I was so calm during the whole experience!" Calm? FDPG?

(the third time) "Who was the best Companion? What is Rose's name in real life? How did she leave the show? Who played the Doctor before David Tennant? Which episode were the Judoon in? What is the name of the stuff the Doctor uses to trick people into thinking he's someone he's not? Which episode where the Scarecrows in? What happened in The Idiot's Lantern?" And so on, and so on, and so on. Mostly FDPG, who believes in memorizing every single speck of Doctor Who trivia. Just as Dominic was saying "Billie Piper!" I caused a floorboard to squeak, whereupon they both fell instantly silent. I whispered in through the door "I know you two are awake, I just heard Dominic say Billie Piper!" FDPG sat up immediately and said "I TOLD you that I heard Mum coming down the stairs. When will you LISTEN to me?" Dominic said "Mum, isn't Billie Piper a boy's name?" "Not always," I said, "the IE on the end of it tells you that it's probably a girl's name. Lots of girls used to be called Billie."

"Oh," he says wonderingly. FDPG nods knowingly.

"Good night," I say. "Good night," they say.

Ahh, sleepovers. They sure have changed since my day.