Real Movies & Marmite

Roger Ebert wants to start a campaign for real movies. I'm in. It's fun seeing cheesy big-screen action flicks with the kids, and thank the heavens for the brilliance of kid-friendly Pixar, but I spent most of my early adulthood going to see obscure films made by people with little allegiance to the Cult of Personality that seems to reign today (witness Catherine Keener in Percy Jackson and think back to Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall). I'm sure I'm venturing into Old Codger territory but for the most part movies are booooring and too expensive.

Curious about the effect of plastic in your life? Read this article in the New Yorker.

Finally, yesterday I featured a new campaign involving Marmite and Horrid Henry. It seems that some of my friends are unacquainted with Marmite. Someone (I won't mention names) almost conflated it with Vegemite. The horror!

So in an effort to convince you of the sheer wonderfulness of Marmite, let me feature a picture from my very own house. See, I've even labelled it in case of Potential Loss of Memory down the road. I'll always know what's behind this door.

(what about that obscure font? it might be hard to read. have you thought of that?)

Look! Marmite jars! It's a Marmite spice rack. If you look really closely you can even see the mini-heart Marmite singles from the Marmite Valentine's day campaign they had a while ago.

Big jars, little jars, medium sized jars. It's a Goldilocks cupboard, where everything is just right.

Look Who's Reading!

Horrid Henry. Of all the unlikely people to pick up a book. At least, that was the initial reaction from all three of my kids, all of whom are fervent Horrid Henry fans. "He never reads!" shouted Dominic gleefully. "Only comic books!" giggled FDPG. "I don't think he'd ever read willingly," said Max, rather ruefully, from the depths of his Write With The Best assignment.

But Henry likes Marmite. Or rather, Marmite likes him. They know a good advertising campaign when they see one, which is why they have the Marmite is Horrid (for Henry fans) and Marmite is Perfect (in case you swing with Perfect Peter) jars for sale at the moment. Go here, then click on your preference. Just for fun, go back and click on the other choice too; we found recipes for Battered Bogey Baps rather intriguing, even though we all LOVE Marmite here.
And at the back of each jar, you'll find a link to a free Horrid Henry audio download.

Look! There's Henry, reading reluctantly. Ruefully. Resentfully. Recalcitrantly. Resistingly. Reservedly.

All thanks to Marmite.

But Wait! There's More!

We've been watching this series on DVD, which is easier on the eye, but thanks to the wonders of YouTube YouToo can watch them. Click on these links and you'll find more.

Try this Emperometer. It's brilliant. A mini history of Rome in under 2 minutes.

Viking Poetry. Or this soft rock classic from that crazy quartet: The Vicious Vikings.

This segment of the show is our particular favourite. Watch that skeleton dance!

Then there's the Shouty Man. I tried to find Inca Child but this one is almost as funny.

Odds & Ends

Heard in the house on the weekend:

"We learn a lot of stuff on The Simpsons." (spoken by one of the kids; suddenly I feel uneasy)

"Why is the smoke coming out of his chimney green & blue? And why does it smell so bad?" (spoken by another one of the kids; I forget what the kids might be learning from Homer and worry about this instead)

"I painted that? That's really nice!" (spoken by one of the kids - the one who forgets easily, obviously; I am too busy rolling my eyes to worry about this)

Interesting article by the indefatigable Stanley Fish. Reiterates why we do what we do in our homeschool world.

New additions:

Gladiators in Britain?

For those of us on the Wobbly West Coast, a little something to make you even more uneasy about The Big One.

Great gardening listening. You can podcast this as well.

Garden Thursday

All things going as they should have gone, this post would have been up last night, but our big homeschool track meet was today and somehow I forgot all about Garden Thursday (luckily I'm not on some payroll somewhere, isn't it). As it was, it's a good thing this is a written column and not a spoken one, because I am hoarse from shrieking "GO! GO! GO!" and "RUN! RUN! RUN!" over and over and over again. Pretty exciting stuff. Nothing like watching your kids run like the wind.

But we were talking gardening, weren't we?

I've had a few people mention the lack of bees in their gardens right now. If you're noticing this make sure you have enough enticing plants for them. Here are a few of the things attracting the bees in my garden: Jupiter's Beard, roses, rhodos, coreopsis, digitalis, asters, balloon flowers, clematis, strawberries, clover, sage, lupins, foamflower, marigolds (I'd include the usual fruit trees but mine have already flowered so I'm focusing mostly on what is flowering at the moment). Don't forget habitat: solitary bees need places to live, whether it's simple holes in the ground or brushy, rocky areas for them to burrow into. I've been noticing a lot of paper wasps and already I have two little 'starter' nests that I had to turf out of the greenhouse. Sadly, one was in the roof beam (where it would have posed a hazard to anyone entering it) and the other was nestled inside a pot, and I only noticed it when I dug out the pot's contents: an overwintered agapanthus. Here's a link to paper wasps, which are good for your garden, if their nest is somewhere that everyone can co-exist with, of course.

It's incredibly green here right now. We've been having a lot of rainy warm weather, which raises the spectre of blight, about which I have little experience (knock on wood) or I'd give you some ideas. The up side to this kind of weather is that it causes the plants to grow like stink. In the top photo you can see the spotted pulmonaria that I cut down to the ground 2 weeks ago. It will be blooming again by August. Surrounding it is the mint that we've been eating every day: in sandwiches, in cous cous, puréed in salad dressings (1/2 cucumber, a good fistful of mint, some seasonings, oil and vinegar and you have a really amazing dressing). I'm also making mint syrups. This is best done with new mint - the stalks are still soft and the taste is fresh. I freeze it in little sandwich freezer bags, to be brought out when it's the middle of winter and we're longing for something fresh in our lemonade or Christmas party punches.

Another project I'm working on is this. You can't see it all that well in the photo but I'm laying PVC pipe across lawns and walkways where the soaker hoses usually run. This way the slaves kids can mow the lawn without me worrying about them mowing the hoses as well. Last year I buried the hoses, which worked well enough although the paths were a bit on the sodden side. This year I am going to thread the hoses through the pipe so the water can run one way or another into a bed and not pool in the ground under the path. I can then leave the pipe in the ground permanently and haul the hose out without worrying about it having been sitting under sod all summer.

Firsts: artichokes are coming up, as are the new potatoes. We've also been eating the first strawberries and honeyberries (from a fruiting honeysuckle). The green onions are everywhere, as is the lettuce (I've got a speckled red and green Romaine called Freckles that is quite unique) and the first raspberries are starting to ripen. Makes up for all those bloody green caterpillars decimating the young apple trees.








I discovered a snake in the garden the other day. She looked very fat, which is what led me to believe that it might be a she soon to be a they. Sigh. I also had snake nightmares that night. I am so not a snake person.

Here's a new garden experiment: we're using chicken wire to grow potatoes in. This particular cage is called Experiment #2. This is Dominic's garden, and you can see the wire in it surrounding a rather large patch of potatoes from last year's Lost & Forgotten Crop. We're adding soil as the plant grows. I am hoping that this will keep the potatoes and their hills from spreading into everything else, as they did last year. I'm what you call a Cram Gardener: I cram what I can into what space I have. You'd be surprised what you can grow vertically if you try.
Here are some more potato cages. They are Experiment #1. I've sawn the bottoms off random plastic pots. Experiment #3 involves more chicken wire and taller cages.

Yes, the fun never ends around here.






Here is Clever Idea #286. Well, I like to think of it as a Clever Idea. We'll see how clever it is come August, when I hope to be harvesting a crop of English cucumbers from the horizontal stick attached at right angles to this cedar stake. At the bottom of the cedar stake is a little cucumber plant (in the clump of white). Four feet to the left of this stake is another stake (with another cucumber plant), and that long horizontal stick is attached to both stakes. The idea is that these cucumber plants will grow up and across, fruiting cleverly and oh-so-handily along that stick. I will flounce along and pick pick pick. This idea came about because we just finished all the cucumber relish I made last year, in my never-ending quest to avoid high fructose corn syrup (condiments being a favourite dwelling place of HFCS). It was good relish. So I will make more, providing this clever idea holds up.

What's the "clump of white" you ask? Ground eggshells. I have a large container of them and I surround all the new starts with a good sprinkling. Keeps the slugs away. Of course, it might actually be the snake keeping the slugs away...
Gratuitous Garden photo.

People always seem surprised when they see my garden in real life, but that's because they don't realize what a tricky photographer I am. On the other side of this tree is a 4 lane freeway, 3 grocery stores, and 5 apartment buildings.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Would still be a rose, right? But would it still have been a Companion?*

The weather here has been warm, humid and wet, perfect for all sorts of chewing bugs, fungal diseases, and my personal favourite: slugs. So instead of chronicling the Potential Disasters of my garden (because who really wants to go there until they have to) and because the Chelsea Flower Show just ended, I thought I'd show you a few photos from Sheila's Flower Show, which is running all this week.

Come this way. No pushing or picking. Stay on the path, please.

Here we have a perfectly charming little climber: the Guy de Maupassant rose. As FDPG put it, it's really pink. It's also really fragrant. This rose has been moved 5 times in the past three years and some of us around here are surprised that it still wants to bloom, but there's no arguing with the Head Gardener. She gets it into her head to move something and no one can reason with her.
(don't tell her we said that)



And in this corner, nestled under an arch, is a Westerland rose. It's a climber too. I feel like Matt James whenever I see this rose (he's an excitably breathless & extremely earnest Brit who does gardening shows and usually has Richard and I in fits of laughter whenever he utters the phrase 'skimmia japonica') because it has me all breathless and earnest in my admiration. It's so beautiful. So orange. So perfect. And a very reliable repeat bloomer, with hardly any penchant for bugs or black spot.










I feel rather pleased with myself here. And maybe, just maybe a little Nancy Drew-ish in my sleuthing ability. This rose came to me as part of someone's divorce settlement: she was clearing out all the ex's things, including roses, and didn't remember the name of it. Call me totally, completely, neurotically and maybe even obsessively anal but I like to know the names of plants, so I went through two massive books on David Austen roses this winter, comparing all the yellow roses he has to the rose memory I had from when this rose briefly bloomed at the end of the summer. I narrowed it down to two: Graham Thomas or Golden Celebration, although I was leaning towards Golden Celebration because of the scalloping on the outer petals (omg, I sound like a rose geek). Anyhow, I took a bud and a bloom (omg, I really AM a rose geek) into a rose nursery and the Head Rose Geek there agreed with me: Golden Celebration. The difference being that the GC buds have tinges of orange, whereas the GT roses don't.

So there. I need to send David Austen this photo, I think. This is one seriously fabulous rose. The smell is amazing too. I have bowls of them all over the house right now. In fact, I love this rose so much I might marry it. That's what I told Richard the Smartass when he asked me. I did not tell him about going to the rose nursery though. He would start to think I was getting like Matt James.
Here is a snap of the entire bush. I'm making it smaller just in case you start to think I really am obsessed with this rose.

(she is obsessed with that rose - she's just in denial)




The Princess Victoria Louise poppy. I've included this poppy in previous years on the Garden Tour, but it's blooming right this very second out in the front yard so I am giving it a Repeat Performance, because it's a must for your garden. Really. Get out to that garden centre RIGHT NOW. Or ask me for seeds.





And here we have a side view of this delightful poppy. It seems to spread nicely, despite only having been here for 2 years.















Finally, we come to that little rascal of the pot plant world: the pansy. This is Blue Sky Frills (not really, I just made that up) and I think you'll agree that it's a stunner (oh honestly, this is getting idiotic).

It's been lovely seeing you all today, hope you enjoyed your tour. Gift shop is on the right as you exit, and the tea shop is around the corner. If you're nice to FDPG she might give you some Girl Guide cookies.







* A really obscure Doctor Who reference, sorry, couldn't resist.

New Horizons

One of us here has entered a new world. With his own money, too. One day it was Thomas trains and Chupa Chups; now it's building complicated LEGO sets and making movies with them.

How times change.