Verb My Noun

Thursday

2009-11-09T13:25:00.002-06:00

This Thursday at 7 p.m. I'll be headed to the Northtown Barnes & Noble for a reading and book signing by Rachel Coyne. Anybody want to join me?

Better than finding $20 in your pocket

2009-10-28T11:47:00.002-06:00

I counted up my vacation days wrong. Turns out I have two whole days that I need to use or lose before the end of the year. This felt like such a bonus, such a gift, that I couldn't accept the idea of not doing something fun.

So Puck and I decided to use one of them to head up to Lutsen for a weekend of skiing. As the kids used to say last year or thereabouts, WOOT! Mid-December holiday FTW! Maybe this time I'll even try a MEDIUM difficulty run!

We'll be staying at the good ol' trusty Cascade Lodge, in the lodge part. If folks could help me remember which restaurants in Grand Marais are don't-miss, I'd appreciate it. (I do remember The Coho Cafe in Tofte, but that's the only name I recall.)

To NaNo or not to NaNo?

2009-10-27T14:34:00.002-06:00

More weekends like that, please

2009-10-19T07:51:00.002-06:00

Had a fabulous time out at the farm. Lots of beer (Oktoberfest, of course!), games, a weird and brief polka interlude, kites, and windy, beautiful walks. (That's windy as in lots of air moving around, not windy as in meandering.) Thanks Temp!

Got back in time to do some fall gardening chores in the gorgeous sunshine, eat one of The Beauty Queen's freakishly perfect acorn squashes for supper, then kick back with a glass of scotch and chat about The Dante Club with The Sexy Blonde and All-Knowing Jen.

Feeling pretty contented with life.

...And talk about the weather

2009-10-14T11:49:00.002-06:00

We had Christmas in October this past weekend with Puck's paternal grandparents, so the snow was entirely appropriate in my world. Besides, Monday I drove past one of those classic fall maple trees, all luminous in rose and yellow, and with the snow cover on top of that it was too ridiculously beautiful to be believed.

I wouldn't be so cheerful about the early snow and cold if I didn't believe we would still get an autumn. At least a week or two of sunshine and temps in the 50s to 60s. There's still time. The veggie garden looks appalling, since every time I've had the free time to pull it out, there's been precipitation of some sort. It's a little ode to death out there right now, which I suppose is seasonally appropriate if nothing else.

Support local authors!

2009-10-08T09:58:00.003-06:00

Especially when they are the sister of a friend of ours!

Rachel Coyne's first novel, Whiskey Heart, is now available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. I'm no good at reviews, so I'm just going to quote a random bit. (Random so I don't have to go through and decide what to quote. Gosh I'm being lazy about this.)

Constance's boys and a dozen of their maternal cousins showed up. They poured out of their aunt's car like water from a jug. The boys cut warpaths between the rows of church members, running and screaming at the top of their lungs, playing or dying, I wasn't quite sure which. The church children did not play with our children, but sat serenely at the feet of their elders, looking pale and ill.

The neighbors filed in but didn't stay too long. The women from Momma's work came to eat and seemed determined to outlast the church people. I wasn't sure if this was a gesture of solidarity with Momma or just their love of potato salad. They lined up at the food table, their big hips bumping softly against one another as they moved. In their flowered and polka-dot dresses, the effect was slightly hypnotic, dizzying. Eventually I fled into the house, towards the shelter of my attic, taking the stairs two at a time.

ETA: I just re-read this and realized how indifferent it may sound. I wrote it at work and my brain was in a half-dozen different places. Just to be clear, I think this is a damn solid book. After a couple interrupted starts, I sat down and read the whole thing in a long Sunday afternoon. It's not a happy book, but it is very honest, raw, and ultimately hopeful. Definitely worth a read.

Because I know many of you will appreciate this

2009-09-17T12:45:00.001-06:00

Some for the fencing, some for the lightsaber, some for both....

Fall gardening, or lack thereof

2009-09-11T11:07:00.002-06:00

Oh right. I keep forgetting that the reason I don't get anything done outside after mid-August isn't because I'm lazy (though I am), it's because of the damn ragweed. Last weekend I tried to break it up some -- half hour here, 45 minutes there, maybe an hour and a half when I got all distracted by deciding to dig out the lily of the valley. Then I spent the next three days mostly unable to breathe despite the allergy meds. Stupid ragweed.

Speaking of lily of the valley, if I could go back in time and deliver one message to myself, it would be, "Don't change the grade of your yard with the dirt from someone's basement, and don't think that piling inches of dead, mostly clay soil on top of lily of the valley will kill it. It won't. It will only make it stronger." I still love lily of the valley, and I'm delighted with it in the shade garden on the northeast corner of the house. But this had been planted on the south side, where all the sun just gives it entirely too much encouragement. Lily of the valley does not need to be encouraged. This year I noticed how much it was encroaching on my iris and lilies, so I figured I'd pull some out and try to restrain it a bit. HA! Silly me, I went in with a little hand cultivator. Isn't that adorably naive? Twenty minutes and a good sharp shovel later, I was pulling up clumps of lily of the valley roots ten inches deep and so dense there was very little room for soil around them. I know I didn't get it all, but I think I've at least slowed it a little.

Nothing to see here

2009-09-03T14:23:00.002-06:00

Nope, still nothing interesting happening in my life.

I'm looking forward to Open Forge at the end of the month. After changing my mind several times, I'm now planning on making tomato cages that don't suck. That is, big and sturdy enough to actually support tomato plants. I love the way the spirals look, but I would like to let the plants just grow next year instead of pinching them back to a single stem. Of course, I don't actually know how I'm going to make said cages, what design I'll be using, etc. I do want to be able to store them without taking up half the garage. Any suggestions?

And hey, three-day weekend coming up and a remarkably open calendar for the foreseeable future. Does this mean I'll actually get some of my fall garden chores done? The ones I talk about every year but never seem to manage? Let's not hold our breath.

Guilt-free pie!

2009-08-21T12:31:00.001-06:00

That is all.

Oh this modern world

2009-08-19T14:20:00.002-06:00

This may be one of the more surreal Internet experiences of my young life. The gentleman next to me, who must be in his seventies, is watching a Flash something-or-other with "Amazing Grace" playing very loudly. I'm sipping a hot chai. Coffee shop? Hardly. Does the hum of multiple coolers seem out of place?

I'm currently enjoying the wireless services of the Ideal Corners Gas, Convenience and Bait Shop (now with schmancy coffee and Internet). Ahead of me? A pizza oven and microwave in front of the cooler of eggs, cheese, milk, various Carl Budding sandwich meats and pre-wrapped Deli Select sandwiches, then the pop cooler. To my right, the chips and snacks aisle. Past that, the minnow tanks and ancient refrigerator that holds styrofoam containers of worms.

Wireless is everywhere.

Even the resort, in fact, though I can't get it in the trailer. So I didn't really need to come to the Ideal Corners Gas, Convenience and Bait Shop, but...oh who am I kidding? I so did!

Besides, it's a great day for bike riding today. Cloudy and cool but not too windy, for the first day since I arrived. Haven't been to A-Pine for pie with my wireless, as I haven't ridden a bike since last year so thought a shorter jaunt would be better. Good thing. My legs wobbled like a colt's when I got off my bike after only a mile or so.

Am having an amazingly good time, which I guess isn't so amazing since I do every year. Suzuri joined me for the first weekend (lucky for me, since Puck took the car to Wisconsin so I lacked a way to get here). We caught fish and cleaned them ourselves! And then ate them for supper, yum. Have been out on the boat lots but haven't been swimming much because there's always been a good stiff breeze to keep me cool. Am most of the way through reading my third novel. Keep half-expecting Temp to show up, sigh. (Stupid railroad.) Why did I only buy six ears of corn? It is so delicious!

Have been away from the news for days, and when I got here all the front pages were talking about Favre, so I still don't know what's happening in the world. So there's something good to come of that anyhow.

Did you know "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" comes in a spray bottle? Doesn't that sort of invalidate their claim? I mean, it's in a spray bottle. I can believe it's not butter. (Sorry, glanced up at the refrigerator case. Welcome to vacation brain! Whee!)

On that note, I should shut up now.

Vacation! And books!

2009-08-14T07:19:00.003-06:00

Week of Solitude starts tonight! How much am I looking forward to this? You have no idea.

To kill some of the interminable minutes between now and then, here's a book meme I stole from Temp over on Facebook.

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
2. The Liar, Stephen Fry
3. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
5. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
6. Watership Down, Richard Adams
7. The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
8. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
10. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
11. Native Son, Richard Wright
12. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
13. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
14. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
15. A Song of Ice and Fire (series), George R.R. Martin

Huh. That was different than I thought. Mostly because of the "books that will always stick with you" bit. I mean, the degree to which I loathed Moby Dick means it will always stick with me, but damned if I'm going to put it on the list. And I just know there are some books that are really dear to me that I just didn't think of right off the top of my head. And then there's the whole thing where books like Jane Eyre were terrifically important to me in my teens, but if I read it now it would be completely different. Some of these are here because of how deeply comfortable they are, others because they are the opposite of that.

Yay books.

The most wonderful time of the year

2009-07-30T18:46:00.002-06:00

I have ripe tomatoes on the vine! (Not many, granted, because of weather, but still! Ripe tomatoes!) The basil is thick and lovely, and I see bruschetta and BLTs in my near future.

AND Colorado peaches are in season and at Bob's. Puck went grocery shopping, saw them, and bought me half a dozen. That oughta last until Sunday or so. Mmmmmm, Colorado peaches. *slurp*

Beans or peas...

2009-07-28T07:24:00.002-06:00

Time to put in a mid-season replacement for the sugar snap peas, which are, because of the very cool summer we've had, only just now starting to fade.

Do I put in more peas, because I like them better? Or beans, because I love how tall and wild the vines get? I do like beans, just not as much as I like snap peas. Hm.

The city has started work on our water line, which means we're currently getting our water from temporary pipes and hoses that put the water into our house through our external faucet — water pressure is actually better than under our usual system, which I hadn't expected. Parking on my block may soon become uncertain, they'll be digging up the easement and eventually replacing it with crap soil and sod, and I still haven't started prepping the space where I want to move my acid garden this fall. I also still haven't torn out the yews or decided what I want to plant in their place.

West side, near the foundation, flanking the front steps. At least on the south side of the steps, if it's an evergreen it has to be either less than three feet tall or very narrow, because Puck quite reasonably doesn't want shade to keep the ice from melting off our front steps. Anything formal would probably look rather silly given the increasing chaos of the rest of the yard. I don't know why I'm at such a loss for ideas.

In which my brain explodes from too much awesomeness

2009-07-23T11:56:00.004-06:00

One of the blogs I read regularly put this up. It's Iggy Pop, circa 1977, on ... get this ... "The Dinah Shore Show".

Did your brain already just short circuit a little bit? Just wait until you get to Dinah Shore's reaction to Iggy explaining how he lost his teeth. And the part where a chain-smoking David Bowie, who's sitting in on the keyboards, almost falls off the piano bench laughing is extra win.

God I love the Internet.

Plant tags are lying bastards

2009-07-14T07:35:00.002-06:00

Not just because of the dark red lilies Temp & I tried to give to Syl that turned out to be orange (okay, one of those tags did say orange, but the one in front said dark red and they were all grouped together and I've never been a careful shopper).

(Also, Syl? Speaking of those lilies, can't find a dark red to save my life. Come fall I'm buying you bulbs.)

Specifically, though, I'm talking about my geranium "Johnson's Blue" in the front yard. Love this plant. But I'm going to need to take a picture of it with a person for scale. The tag says "Height: 15-18 inches; Spread: 12-15 inches."

Hahahahaha! 15" spread? Try 60". Mine is three feet high, five feet wide and sprawly as all get-out. I really should cut it back, but it's still in full bloom and the bees love it, so it's just going to continue to dominate the front until it stops pumping out flowers. (It's been going strong for well over a month. Did I mention that I love this plant?)

Vacation pictures

2009-07-03T15:27:00.003-06:00

I finally got around to throwing a few vacation pics up on Flickr. Lucky for you, I only have the free account, so instead of 400-some, you'll only suffer through 34.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7369198@N06/sets/72157620904465576/

Once more, with feeling

2009-07-01T12:13:00.002-06:00

Last weekend I finally cleaned up an old mess. I'm talking, of course, about the aborted attempt to prune my lilac: the one that looked like some giant creature had come and taken a chomp out of it, the one that served as an object lesson for my fellow new-to-gardening friends on how not to do something.

I'll admit, I was dreading it. I'm afraid of pruning. I don't like cutting up trees and shrubs (but better that than cutting them down). I don't know what I'm doing, and what looks so clean and simple in how-to books is a lot more confusing and daunting in real life. But clearly the poor shrub couldn't go on looking like the victim of a wayward brontosaurus,* and besides, NoNick was having Yeti take down his maple tree, so I had access to a wood chipper.

So I grabbed my pruning saw, gritted my teeth and went to work. (I had, as my mantra, a quote from Macbeth. Fifty of the imaginary currency of your choice if you can figure out what it was.)

It's done. It's shorter, which was the plan. It no longer looks like something large took a bite out of it. It does, however, sort of look like something large decided to sit on it. I'm hoping that new growth will fix that.

I'm also hoping I don't have to prune anything else around here for a good long time.

*Yeah, yeah, I'm spreading bad science. I hardly think the name matters when we're talking about one chomping on my lilacs.

It's about damn time

2009-06-30T15:07:00.001-06:00

Three cheers for Senator Franken!

Brief update

2009-06-25T05:41:00.002-06:00

Temp talked to Syl by phone yesterday: surgery went well. I'll let Syl tackle any details she wants to, but I at least wanted to get that much out there. :-)

The wine came in!

2009-06-24T13:06:00.002-06:00

Puck and I have allowed ourselves to be added to the Surdyk's e-mail list, which is a bad bad thing for our pocketbooks but a good good thing for the very nice wine cellar he's created in the little room downstairs. (Now with wine rack!) A little over a month ago, said Surdyk's e-mail list forced us (forced I say!) to order three cases of Argentinian wine. And today they arrived! Woot! That will help the wine rack look less empty. At least for a little while.

Meanwhile, yes, vacation, weekends, GAW, 8 meme, gardening stuff...I'm a little behind on the blogging thing. I'll at least let y'all know if I ever manage to get the vacation pics posted up to Flickr.

Dear Sam Brody,

2009-06-09T08:03:00.003-06:00

Happy first birthday. (And thank you for being born on a date I will actually remember.)

All I ever wanted

2009-05-29T15:07:00.002-06:00

Leaving for the Pacific Northwest tomorrow morning. Have only 1.5 million things to get done before then. Whee!

Guest Post

2009-05-22T06:53:00.001-06:00

Diplowhat sent me the following.

Dear Loyal Readers,
No, Wog World and Undiplomatic Ravings have not been shut down. At least, we hope they haven't been shut down. They have, however, been blocked along with all other blogger sites. I know you have dearly missed our witty posts and snarky comments on your own blogs, but we hope to be back in action after June 4. (That's the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen "Policial Incident".) If not, we will have to find a good proxy server to get around these annoying blockades!

In the mean time, know that life continues here in Beijing. We've made it out to a different section of The Wall (we will take you if you visit - it's awesome!), our home study rapidly approaches on June 5-7, and my Chinese test also rapidly approaches on July 2nd. My teachers claim I will do fine if I can keep my nerves under control. Yeah, well China would do great if it could get corruption and pollution under control. Likelihood of any of those things happening? You're smart - you can guess the answer.

Garden idea for AKJ

2009-05-08T12:04:00.009-06:00

For the first time in a long time, I have a really slow day at work. And hey, AKJ is looking for ideas for a shade garden! Hello timing. :-) For the record, I'm just screwing around here. I like building imaginary gardens.

Veggie is right that your soil will collapse a little as the roots die. Plus you have a maple that's going to want to compete for nutrients. So I say bring in a nice pile of fresh dirt and compost and make a subtle berm. (Of course I say that! I don't have to do the work!) If you want the garden to be viewable from all sides, you could make it highest in the center, or you can pick a side to be the "back" and make that the high point.

Here's what I would plant at said high point: Actaea (formerly Cimicifuga) racemosa "Hillside Black Beauty". It has handsome black-purple foliage, gets 4 feet tall (the flower spikes can go up to 7') and makes a nice, dramatic backdrop for all sorts of other shade-loving plants.

I couldn't have a shade garden without Polygonatum variegata (Solomon's Seal). Two to three feet tall, so you can plant underneath them.

Maybe something like the ridiculously charming Galium odorata (Sweet Woodruff)! It's cute, tiny, loves the shade, repels bugs and you can dry it and use it as potpourri. It can spread a bit, but the solution to that is to not water it. Seriously. About 6" tall.

Or if you want a groundcover with a little more substance, there's always Vinca minor (Periwinkle). Like the woodruff, it might try to take over your lawn a bit though. (That's what groundcovers do.) Grows close to the ground.

Of course, hosta are the ultimate can't-kill-it shade plant. And they're not so boring if you use them as a backdrop to show off your Athyrium (Japanese fern). (Maybe a foot high)

For funky foliage, you really can't beat Heuchera (coral bells) — drop these on the sunnier side. They'll do fine in shade, but you get the best color with some sun.

What? You want flowers? Well, okay, but you'd have to work for them a little. (By "work for" I mean water. Regularly.) Enter the Astilbe.

Yay. That was fun. :-)