Catching Up: All of the things I didn't write about when I really should have written about them

Hey there! I know, my time for doing the 2011 Year in Review posting was soooo two weeks ago, yet here I am leaping onto the bandwagon. Or perhaps I'm just stumbling after it.

Only time will tell.

The children have all gone back to school today - Caitlin to her last semester in Elementary school and the twins to their last semester in Pre-school. Come fall I will have one child in middle school and a pair of kindergarteners! How crazy is that?

Certifiable, that's how crazy!

We went on a tour of Caitlin's Junior High Middle School last night, she and I, and I was markedly impressed. I am hereby remarking upon it. I'm hoping she loves it as much as I suspect she will. So many programs and clubs!

Anyway, last year...was a whopper. There were a number of very good things about it and some seriously miserable things. If you've been following along, you'll know of what I speak. I'll try to focus on the good stuff instead of sniffling over my keyboard.

Perhaps reverse order?

Xmas 2011 was very close to being a wash. Turns out that someone around here needs to start taking her vitamin D pills starting in September so that it has a chance to build up in her system. You know, in case you want to avoid a serious case of the Bah, humbugs! by the time Christmas rolls around again. I didn't get cards done or mailed packages to family. Let's just say I take after Dad on this one. Who's up for Christmas in July?!

The family came through for us on Xmas. There were all kinds of things from the cousins, grandparents, aunts and such. I didn't feel bad that we didn't add to the insanity other than a book apiece and a single DVD. Well, if you don't include the stockings. Those were full of chocolate this year (Plus the traditional apple and orange, although I subbed a Clementine for a regular orange. Must more kid friendly.). Which everyone ate while I was still in bed, as you can tell from Little Miss Chocolate Face right here.

Logan gravitated to the largest box under the tree.  Turns out it was a Lightning McQueen springy tent thingy. He loves it. He jumps on it. Love and mangling go hand in hand, don't they?

I only asked for one thing this year. Well, other than no whining and fighting. Eric came through with a 50mm 1.4 lens! Woo! Here is a lovely shot of my test subject.

I'll have to play with the lens more in the new year. I look forward to more sexy bokeh!

This year's Spelling Bee fell on Eric's birthday, which doesn't actually explain why there are no photos of the tiny dinner party we had for him, but there it is. Caitlin didn't win the Bee this year, but came in 2nd place. She was undone by the word "laborious" by adding an extra "u". I was sad the Bee didn't go on longer because I really enjoy when you're down to the last two contestants and the words start flying back and forth, getting harder and increasingly esoteric. Ah well. She's got 3 more years of Bees, if she still wants to go for Nationals! We applied prescription levels of ice cream and all was right with the world.

During the first weekend in December, I shot my friend Susan's baby boy's first birthday party. Tiny red heads are so cute!

Perhaps I'll get back into the swing of photography again this year? At some point I'll have to determine what I want to do with myself once the twins are in school full time. I'm debating going back to school, the only question remains, for what?! That, however, is a discussion for another time. Deep, dark, soul-baring discussion.

In seemingly typical me fashion, I have pictures of the bread I made for Thanksgiving, but no pictures of Thanksgiving festivities. I fail the acid test of diehard scrapbookers. Clearly I'm not a scrapper.

Three versions of braided bread. Left: 6 strand braid; middle: 3 strand braid; right: 2 strand braid.

But...! But the bread was really good!

In the middle of November, still on the bread theme, I was testing out the differences in retarding my sourdough overnight versus baking it off the same day it rose.

Bread on the left retarded in the brotform overnight in the fridge. Maintained the shape better, but had less oven spring and grigne than the one on the right, which I baked the same day as final fermentation.

Either way, it was delicious.

In early November, we made a "surprise" trip to KS for Val's 40th birthday.

Except for one small problem: she wasn't surprised. Turns out her boyfriend can't keep a secret to save his life! I offered to pummel him, but he declined.

On Halloween, we got dressed up and took the kids Trick or Treating, but then completely forgot to take pictures of them in their outfits! It it wasn't for Misty requesting photos of her ultra cool Raven costume, there wouldn't be one of either Eric or I in our Archer/Lana Kane outfits either. Whoops!

In mid-October I finished the dining room painting and hung the floating shelves with Eric.

The finished art cabinet is in the corner. Keeper of all things paper, paint, and crayon related.

My String of Pearls plant won't survive the winter outdoors. Turns out that it can't survive my care indoors, either. Sadly, most of the succulents pictured here are dead now. I'll have to some up with an alternate display!

Wall of succulents brought in before the weather got too cold. 

I'm so glad I finished painting the main floor. It makes a huge difference in how I feel about the house. In early spring I'll work on the rest of the painting. I need to be able to keep the windows open. Even low VOC paint has fumes that make my head spin in enclosed spaces.

In late September, the twins turned 4 and we had a party. Not that you noticed, since I didn't post anything about it in Blogland. Nope, skipped over it entirely on the blog, but posted pics on Facebook for my mom to see.

The big cousins, plus Marlena.

The cupcakes. This is as fancy as I got. Chocolate cupcakes with mint frosting, pink sprinkles for Emma with princess toothpicks and red sprinkles for Logan with Cars toothpicks. Tah-dah! Decorated! No balloons, no matching tableware and a whole lot less to throw away at the end of the party. Somewhere in Canada, my kid sister is stunned by how undecorated it all is. We have opposite birthday talents: she's amazing at decorating. I put all my energy into the food.

Emma shows off her princess cookie. Those were my goodies for the goodie bag: a single enormous sugar cookie with Royal frosting and pink or red sprinkles. Once again, "simple" and without a lot of trash or little plastic bits to get vacuumed up later.

We had our very own in-house facepainter at the party! Grammy Linda has taken on a new career as a facepainter and was doing up adult and child guests alike. Jenni makes a lovely butterfly.

Emma and Logan made a new friend at preschool: Asher.

King for a day!

Logan shows off his car cookie chomping skills.

The twins still love it when everyone sings. It's much more difficult to take pictures of them when they're no longer held in place by highchairs!

In between ferocious painting episodes, I stopped on occasion and enjoyed my hummingbirds.

Other than losing weight (Or, to be honest, just temporarily misplacing it since it seems to have found me again...), gaining muscle and then falling off the horse again (hard), the rest of the year was all related to Dad. The big drive cross country. Family. I still have yet more pictures from Canada to edit, which I'll get to this week.

I know, it's only been 6 months!

Whoops! Better go get the twins from pre-school! Ciao!

Spring Emergence

I feel like I'm breaking dormancy, much like my plants.

There's a lot going on.

My friend Val visited for 2 weeks and I haven't written about that. Eric and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary last week and I haven't written about that either. My dad turned 77 on Sunday and I have a post percolating in my head about him, too. (Warning! Tear jerker post imminent!)

Instead, I've been buying succulent plants and potting them up. Taking the ones I grew last year and over wintered inside (The ones that survived! Ack! White fly!) and potting them up in new containers, planting out the cuttings I'd taken last year and grew on and potting those up. I'm currently on a succulent bender.

Since I didn't grow a single plant from seed this year, I had to buy my annual tomato plants. They're sitting in pots on the deck as we speak. The weather has been too cold at night to put them into the raised beds...yet. I'm looking forward to getting the veggie garden started again. I even bought a few bell peppers and some strawberry plants and am going to try raising the strawberries in my giant pots on my deck instead of in the ground, where they will attempt to take over the garden. Again. Next up: putting a hardware cloth cylinder around each pot to keep the squirrels from absconding with my hard won strawberries!

I've been doing a little weeding. When I felt overwhelmed by all of the weeding I still needed to do, I took a break and cleaned up the deck. It collects a lot of dead leaves that blow in from the trees and assorted dead plant bits from my potting and repotting. We've even managed to eat a few meals out there already! I made a point of clearing the table off so that we could. The weather has finally started warming up, although it's been really windy the last couple of days.

I picked up 2 new bird feeders and actually filled them and set them out. I cleaned out the deck birdbath and filled that too. Then, when I heard the distinct sound of a hummingbird whizzing by, I immediately set up a sugar water feeder and set it out as well. I still haven't seen any, but at least I heard one and responded accordingly. I may wrap the feeder in red ribbon to make it more obvious to scouting hummers.

I was looking at the front xeric garden and noticing a lot of dead zones and determined that the sprinkler heads are messing up the watering pattern. Those may be xeric plants but they do like some water occasionally. I'll need to get Eric out there to replace some heads. I also plan on digging out the grass that is determined to grow in the middle of the bed and relocate some plants around the space. It's a ridiculous amount of work, but right now, the bed looks pretty hellish. Poor plants! That's what happens when Hatchet goes bye-bye for ~2 years. Ugh.

Today, I was determined to fill in the bed under the cherry tree some more, so I weeded it a bunch and then relocated some bleeding hearts from the backyard. They weren't looking too happy in the back there, so hopefully a change of scene will perk them up. Also, being sprayed with herbicide by the lawn guy didn't help them any!

Yeah, I decided to bite the bullet and hire an actual lawn guy. Eric's just not into gardening (or lawns) at all, so someone has to do the work I'm never going to get to. Also, after chatting with him for a bit, it turns out he can do paths and such, so I'm having him rip up the north side of the house, cap off the sprinkler heads in there and turn it into a work zone for me. Crushed gravel under foot, a small gate to keep out the crazy short people and a place to put all of my tools, wheelbarrows, potting bench and supplies! Suddenly the deck will stop looking quite so messy with the bench relocated.

You might be wondering where all of this crazed energy came from. Well, I finally saw my doc and got a blood draw that proved my thyroid was out of whack again and my vitamin D was really low. Surprise! (Yeah, you're so not surprised.) I'm also trying out vitamin Z, for a little while. It seems to be helping. The sunlight is definitely helping and I'm really starting to feel more like myself again.

Now if I can just keep the twins out of trouble while they're in the yard with me, I can get some real gardening done!

There might be be photos!

What have you been up to?

In The Garden

September came on suddenly, the way it often does, with a change in the weather. Oddly enough, it appeared as if the very first day of September meant an abrupt shift to Fall Weather. The weeks of hot, sweltering summer vanished in an instant.

Now we have cool days and almost cold nights.

Fortunately, I still have hummingbirds.

Fly to me, my love, and sip the nectar from my depths.

I still have several of them zipping around the yard and fighting for the right to drink all of the nectar from the deck plants.

Mmm! Agastache 'Heather Queen'. A 2007 vintage. Lovely!

Here he is, finally at rest.

Taking a breather.

He keeps the interlopers on their...errr...wings.

In the front yard (Also hummingbird territory.), the container plant has filled in and the millet is putting up flowering stalks.

Flowering stalks that smell remarkably like cumin or curry. Yum!

The bed I created earlier this summer has gone nuts.

Beneath the cherry tree, flowers bloom and bees buzz.

As I was weeding, I found a casualty: one of my toads lay dead. I don't know what did it in, but I was saddened at its passing. (No photos of that one because...ew!)

Close up of the flowers. Click to enlarge for detail.

I'm looking forward to trying new flowers under there next year. Still haven't decided what I want to put in there permanently, but I could be a wild woman and leave it a bed of mostly annuals I suppose. I shall have to think on it. I do think the river of red flowers that curls around the tree has worked out very well indeed and the night scented Jasmine Alata was wonderful. Next year I hope to get plants for this bedstarted even sooner. This fall I'll mulch the bed and clean out all of the annuals once they are killed off by frost.

Death undoes us all.

Soon the gardening season will wrap up again for another year. I feel like I have a lot to show for it and yet not enough. It's never enough for me. Other people call it a "hobby". For me it is an obsession.

A beautiful obsession.

Dusk on the deck

The twins are sleeping. The kitchen has been cleaned...well enough. Eric is off fixing something.

And I?

I am sitting on the back deck, still as a statue, laying in wait for hummingbirds. I have a feeder in my hand and a saucer of sugar water on the table in front of me. I am utterly still.

A dozen Nighthawks flit through the air high above me, intent on snatching insects out of the air. They swoop and glide, instantly changing direction in pursuit of prey. I track their movements mostly with my eyes. I don't want to move my head too much and scare of my prey.

Just a few minutes ago, I walked out onto the deck with this plan in mind. I stopped within five feet of the feeder when I saw there was a hummer on it sipping delicately. I watched and waited. Suddenly, a second hummingbird flew up and started to check me out.

Minutely.

It got really close to my face. So close, in fact, that I became a little worried about my eyes. It hovered there and watched me. When I blinked, it reversed away from me by a few more inches. When I stopped blinking, it came in even closer. The sound of its wings was very loud that close to my face.

Goosebumps popped up all over my arms and legs.

My little friend then started moving sideways, going towards the back of my head and getting even closer to my ear. I was squinting at this point, the buzzing sound is sort of tickly and freaky, but I was still trying not to move anything and frighten off the hummer. Next thing I knew, the first hummer (Remember him? The one on the feeder.) suddenly realized there was another male horning in on his territory (Apparently I'm included.) and came zipping over.

Right at my face!

I could hear them arguing by my ear and felt the vibrating burr of two sets of wings. My goosebumps got goosebumps.

The two took off, straight up. The one that was intently watching me was chased off. My hummingbird stationed himself in my tree, resting for a moment, but ever vigilant.

That's when I grabbed the feeder and sat down to wait.

Unfortunately for me, I think he was on to me and my plan. He fed from the flowers right next to me and even looked around for the feeder, but didn't come any closer. Phooey!

Have I mentioned how much I love summer?! Woo!

Hummingbirds: Minimum Two

One to drink the flower nectar and one to chase it off.

Enjoying the 'Heather Queen' agastache that overwintered in a pot on the deck last year.

Here's one (the same one?) enjoying the Texas Hummingbird Sage in a pot on the deck.

Here's one at the bird bath, behind a tomato plant.

OK, that's not a hummingbird! That's a finch! He was cute, though.

I still haven't tried getting outside really early and laying in wait with a saucer of sugar water in my hand. I really need to try that. These birds really aren't afraid of me eating them. I move way too slow!

Of course, if I do that, who will take the pictures?!

Heeeere birdie, birdie, birdie!

Ahhh! Hummingbirds! My summer is complete!

I've admitted to my wildlife obsession. What's yours?

First hummingbird sighting!

I saw the first hummingbird of the season in my yard, finally.

I know, I know! You've had them for months now. Where exactly have I been?

Ah well. Such are the ways of hummingbirds. Around here, they stay in the mountains until the wildflowers are gone and since this was a wet, cold spring, the wild flowers are longer lasting than usual.

Immediately after spotting the hummer checking out my trellised morning glories, I spotted a hawk overhead. Interestingly enough, the hawk appeared to be trailing jesses. Someone close by must be hunting their hawk. Not exactly what one expects to see in suburbia, but you never know around here.

Now I have 3 hummingbird feeders set up around the deck. It's just a matter of time, now.

Heeeeere birdie-birdie-birdie!

Flower Power

[Warning! This is a long post about flowers and gardening. Not interested? Time to go look at kitties!]

Remember how I said gardening led to woodworking? Well, it still does.

A trellis? For me? Thank you!

I'd been planning on what I was going to do with the big pots for a long while. After getting so many other things done for sale, I was finally ready to put the big pots together, where they would live happily-ever-after on my deck. However, there was a sticking point: some of the plants I wanted to put in there to attract hummingbirds (Cardinal climber and Hyacinth bean vine.) would require a trellis. And a trellis would require building. By Eric, of course. You can't buy the kind of trellis I want (Of course.), instead, I designed it out of 1 x 2s boards. So after bugging him incessantly asking him nicely for weeks, he finally put it together. In order for that to happen, we needed to make some space on the deck which is always a wreck by the end of the year. Thankfully, Heather helped me to clean up my deck and with a lot of shuffling around, my pots finally had a home.

Not that I want to block the view of my lovely street that is now revealed in all its glory after removing my weedy trees, or anything. Ahem.

First blooms.

In the first pot, I have Dahlia 'Arabian Night', Cardinal climber, Hyacinth bean vine, Salvia 'Purple Volcano', Portulaca 'Sundial Peppermint', Dichondra 'Silver Falls', Agastache 'Purple Pygmy' and Lavatera 'Twins White'. I grew all of them from seed. I'm still waiting for the smaller ones to catch up and fill in, but it's really just a matter of time at this point. Unless, of course, the dahlia takes over the whole pot, which is also a possibility and if it does, I'll learn from it. Also, next year, I'll start them sooner than April.

Close up.

Extreme close up.

Growing the dahlia in a pot seems like a great way to get up close to them and pay better attention to their needs (And avoid earwigs. Bleah!). I'm too afraid to pinch them back like mad in order to get a "dinner plate" sized bloom, but I'm pretty happy with the 5" blooms it's sporting now. Maybe if I can get it to overwinter in the basement will I be willing to mess around with serious disbudding next year.

As Thomas Cooper said: "A garden is never so good as it will be next year."

I keep looking forward to next year. One day I might even get to "next year's" garden.

Second pot, different from the first.

The second pot is a trial of Dahlia 'Procyon', butterfly weed, more Cardinal climber, Portulaca 'Sundial Gold', and Scarlet sage, again for the hummingbirds. I'm counting on a lot of hummingbird action at some point this summer! Haven't had a single one so far. Only the sage and portulaca are currently in bloom, but the dahlia should open up any day now. It will be yellow and red, tying together the yellow portulaca and the scarlet sage and vine. At least, that's the plan.

Cardinal climber in bloom. Heeeeere hummingbirds!

After setting up the three big pots, I determined that I really needed something else to fill in the spaces in between them, so I relocated a pair of pots that had volunteer climbers in them. In the first, Morning glory 'Grandpa Otis', which has purple blooms. The first of its blooms opened yesterday. It ought to really enjoy being able to scramble up the 8' high trellis.

Grandpa's gettin' up there.

In the second, a completely volunteer pot, filled with Agastache, Scarlet sage, Portulaca and one Cardinal climber, that I volunteered for duty. I have no idea what that pot will look like as it fills in, other than what it currently is: chaotic. Perhaps I'll pull a few things out and pot them up separately, but I have enough work to keep me busy, so that is a pretty low priority. Neither balanced, nor planned, it seems pretty happy.

Mutt pot.

Finally, I decided to spend some money on a purple Cordyline 'Red Sensation', just to see how the other half lives. The "Other Half", you see, doesn't grow their container plants from seed. They just go out and buy wild, luscious potted beauties. Me? I have to do it the hard way. Around the Cordyline are Agastache 'Golden Jubilee', Agastache 'Purple Pygmy', Salvia 'Purple Volcano', Portulaca 'Sundial Peppermint' and more Dichondra 'Silver Falls'. Unfortunately, I started this pot later than all the others and I used up all of the runts of the plant litter, as it were. So we'll see if this ever fills in as the summer wears on. Or if I just have a giant pot of Cordyline.

Grow plants! Grow!

Then there's the mish-mash of assorted other potted plants that roam around the deck.

Herbs: rosemary, tarragon, summer savory, thyme, purple basil, stevia.

Pot of potentially flowering mish-mash.

Waiting for them to fill in.

Moving on!

The front yard currently looks like this:

Xeric garden, July 2008.

The Bees Below Your Knees garden has filled in nicely in the last two years. There are one or two empty spots where a non-xeric plant died and where Eric ran over another plant (Poor Blue Hills Sage! I knew him, Horatio!). If I can remember to do it, I have plants in the backyard that I can move to fill in those blanks.

You know, in my spare time.

Or maybe it will all just have to wait until November when the Market is over.

Keeping the bees below your knees since 2006.

Close up shots in three parts.

Left side.

Middle.

Right side.

Finally, the remaining potted plants have been growing despite my attempts to forget to water them regularly. When last we met, the plants in this pot were a lot smaller! What a difference a month makes!

Needs more purple.

I noticed the Hens and Chicks in my succulent pot are starting to flower. I think that may mean the end of those particular succulents, if I'm not mistaken! I've never seen one flower before, and now three of them are flowering! Hopefully the chicks will survive the death of the hen.

The pink flowers is the first of the flowering Hens.

Since I was in the mood for succulents, a few weeks back I picked up two more Sempervivums. One is 'Blue Boy', pictured in the center here and the other is Bronco, pictured further below. I rather like them. Realistically, Sempervivums are my replacement for Echeveria, which I really liked on my trip to Vancouver (See the picture of the fantastic chair in this link.), but they won't survive our winters. So, Hens and Chicks it is.

'Blue Boy', surrounded by Sedum spurium 'Tricolor' and Sedum pachyclados 'Rosette', along with a couple of portulacas, to fill it out.

This time, I'll get the sedums into the ground in the fall, or at least protect this pot better than last year.

I hope.

Sempervivum 'Bronco' surrounded by Portulaca from the seeds I'd saved here. Did I mention that I have a lot of volunteer Moss rose?

Considering the sheer amount of work represented by all of the plants above, I still haven't found the time to weed that one danged bed. However, my deck looks pretty nice and floriferous.

Now if only those hummingbirds would make their grand entrance!