YIP (Yard in Progress) 28Jun2008

This week in review

Two weeks in a row now, I thought I would post a 'week in review' because I hadn't gotten aroung to a Friday 5. But last week, Lorraine beat me to the punch with her Friday 5 and this week, I thought of one I wanted to post (albeit on Saturday morning). However, I still like the idea of a week in review, so here goes.

Highlights from the week of 22 June- 27 June 2008

1. Saturday, I went to a class at Beaver Creek Reserve and built a Leopold bench. All the benches made in class turned out great and what a nice group of people! The power tools made me a little nervous, so I think I will leave most of that kind of stuff to Dan, but I am very proud of my bench.

2. Sunday, the boys and I sang 'Farther Along' at church. There are many different verses to this song, some quite down in the mouth. We chose to sing the more upbeat ones and took it at a pretty fast clip. It was well received. Abe has been bugging me to pull out my autoharp so I dug aroung and found it. Couldn't find my books or tuning wrench, though, which means I really couldn't play it.

In the evening, Mose and I drove to church to drop off a salad for a big funeral there the next day and then drove to the van parking lot so I could sign off for a few days. We parked the car there and walked around town, admiring some beautiful older homes.

3. Monday, I drove in to work with Dan. His day now starts 1/2 hour earlier than it used to which means we had to get up at 3:30 am. That was very grim.

After work, we stopped at a Linder's flower mart nearby to take advantage of their 50% off sale, one of my favorite events of the year. We bought a Goldflame Honeysuckle and 3 cranberry cotoneasters. We'll plant the honeysuckle where it can wind around the lattice under our front porch and the cotoneasters are for the area between our driveway and (new) front sidewalk.

We didn't linger long though so I had plenty of time when I got home to plant my garden. Yes, I put everything in the ground. The mosquitoes feasted on my pasty white flesh, but I was on a roll and they didn't bother me.

4. Tuesday, I drove in with Dan again (the boys were at their Dad's). After work, we drove to REI in Bloomington where we found a couple bear barrels (not beer barrels) for trips to the Boundary Waters (never again will we go there without them). I had thought we'd take mainly freeze dried meals this time, but on seeing the outrageous prices, decided we'd make our own again, but less extravagant, less smelly stuff. I still regret the dark chocolate ginger candies that the bear got to before I did **sniff**.

We stopped at Gerten's, too, another favorite place for plants but, alas, not known for having fabulous sales. We bought two Sea Green Junipers there.

5. Wednesday, we just came home and stayed home. Whew.

6. Thursday, Dan had to get to work by 2:30 am. Needless to say, I didn't go in with him that day.

Dan was exhausted that evening and went to bed right after supper. The boys and I watched Friendly Persuasion, recommended by Lorraine.

7. Yesterday, I worked from home. My boss has a policy now where we can work from home on Fridays, if we don't have to be in the office for one reason or another. 7 people on her team COULD choose work from home and 5 of us HAVE chosen.

I put in a long day. We had Domino's pizza for supper and watched From Here to Eternity, which we loved.

It was a good week. We continue to have really nice weather. It was a little sticky yesterday, but we still haven't turned the A/C on. It rained last night and freshened things up, so I don't think we'll need it today, either.

Friday 5: Jobs

Mose has a job! He's working at McDonald's and liking it all right so far. He told me that when he left yesterday, the manager told him, "You did a h*** of a job today." I had a good laugh when Mose told me about it, since I could say with certainty that it was the first time he'd ever been told that.

So, what about jobs and you? Tell me:

1. Have you ever had a job with a uniform? Describe it. Did you like or dislike having to wear one?

2. What was your first job? Would you recommend a similar job to a first-job-seeker?

3. What was your worst job? What did you learn from it?

4. What is your current job? How long have you been doing it? What do you like and dislike most about it?

5. What would you like to be your last job?

Friday 5: Classics

A little late.

1. Do you like classic movies? (For our purposes let's say made before 1960)

2. Why or why not?

3. Which movies from that era are your favorites? Why?

4. Who are your favorite stars from that era?

5. If you had the chance to do a really good remake, which movie would you choose, and which of today's stars would be in it?

Wordless Wednesday

 

We are having a lovely summer

Tuesday


Sunny

Hi 74°F

When your kids are smarter than you

Reading a post here, got me thinking about how often lately I have stopped to ask myself, "Who is the adult here?" And heard the answer back, "Not you."

Here's one recent example: As Mose and I walked to the car after a trip to the grocery store a couple weeks ago, I let drop some snotty, thoughtless remark about the young man who had rang up our purchases. He had done nothing wrong, I simply didn't like "the way he spoke to me" or "his tone of voice" or some equally uptight nonsense. Mose quickly spoke in the cashier's defense, not putting me down, but explaining how he (Mose) interpreted the interaction. He spoke gently and reasonably and I was silenced by the fairness of what he said and my own smallness.

And another: Abe often asks me to watch or listen to something he finds on the web - either a song he likes or a video clip or picture that makes him laugh. Sometimes, the timing is good for me but more often it's not or I think it's not. On Saturday, he said he had something he wanted me to see at a moment I felt very stressed out. But instead of graciously declining and thanking him for wanting me to share his enjoyment with him, I launched into full blown pity party the theme of which was I wish I had time to sit around all day and surf. He didn't get caught up in my stress but he didn't let me off the hook either. He patiently explained that he knew that I had a lot more responsibility than him, but all I needed to tell him at a time like that was 'No'.

This had never occurred to me before. You mean, I can just say, 'No'? Just give a simple response, rather than one laden with enough emotional baggage to sink a whole afternoon?

It's times like these that I admire my boys most and am awed by God's grace in shaping them into people who are often kinder, often wiser and always less complicated than I am.

Material Monday: Terra Tiller

I've spent some quality time over the last several days with a tool that looks a lot like this. I'm using it to break up the clods in the dirt I'm moving to make my flower border. And it's also very handy, if you put in on its side, for pulling the dirt around to level the surface.

The border is going to be slightly raised - maybe 3 inches. The area I've marked out measures 4 feet wide and 50 feet long and is just a simple rectangle. It should get sun most of the day and seems to be relatively dry, though it lies not far from patches of ground that are quite spongy.

I've moved a lot of dirt onto the bed in the last couple days. When the tree spade man was here, we had him pile most of the plugs on the south edge of our lot. I didn't have anything in particular in mind at the time, but knew we'd want the fill for one project or another. The idea of sorting the black dirt out of the plugs to make a long border seemed to come from nowhere one day and picked up momentum when I visited the Bluestone Perennials web site and saw they were nearing the end of their spring clearance sale. That was just the motivation I needed to get serious about planning the border.

I wanted something to anchor the bed at each end and had a $25 credit from White Flower Farm burning a hole in my pocket, so we ordered 2 Little King Fox Valley river birches, a dwarf form of the tree that should only get around 10 feet high and form a clump 12 feet wide.

With all the rain over the past several weeks, it's been hard to get out in the yard, but the last two days have been perfect gardening weather, except for the small storm that passed through last night and dumped some more rain down.

I haven't spent a ton of time on the border but I'm pleased with the way it's turning out and figure on another hour or two until it will be ready for planting. I'm aiming for Wednesday evening to start but may get a head start tomorrow night with a couple things. Like the Pink Peace rose Carol gave me for my birthday. That was before I knew where I was going to plant anything besides the trees, so I stuck the rose in a deep pot and it's been happy there. It's wearing a single bud as a topknot. I've been a little leery of hybrid tea roses in the past but by all accounts this variety is healthy and hardy and may grow 6' tall. Wouldn't that be stunning?

YIP (Yard in Progress) 14Jun2008

Friday 5: Celebrate Your Dad!

In anticipation of Sunday's big day:

1. What ways are you VERY like your father?
2. What ways are you NOT like your father?
3. How do you wish you were MORE like your father?
4. What life lessons have you learned from your father?
5. What is a favorite "Dad" memory?

A very happy Father's Day to all Dads, Uncles, Brothers, and to all soon-to-be Dads, like my nephew Conor!

Witch hazel = Candy

I guess if you're a bunny, witch hazel tastes like candy. Which explains why, a couple days after we planted our nice little witch hazel shrub from Winter Greenhouse, I noticed several of the spindly branches snapped off. And why, the next day, all the little spindly branches were snapped off and all that was left was a collecting of blunted leafless sticks. Dan quickly made a cage for what was left of it and for all our other, as yet untasted, shrubs.

The bright side of the story is that I had just read in my favorite gardening book that you should prune a shrub after planting it, advice I seldom bring myself to follow. This time, the rabbits did it for me.

Lasagna supper: reflections

Here's how it really went:

• the friends we originally invited weren't able to make it, so we left a message at our pastor's (also our neighbor) house inviting him. Didn't hear from them, so I was all anxious about it, until I talked to Sylvia, his wife after church, and they said they'd love to come. Had plenty of food, so also invited a relative newcomer to our church to come too. Her husband was working a 24 hour shift at the hospital and she was happy for some adult company and we were happy to have her and her two charming young children.
• I bought a bottle of very good wine to go with the meal - Root:1 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. Oh it was so nice and smooth. I used my usually sophisticated wine shopping method: look for the right color, look for a good price, look for a good rating and buy the one with the nicest label.
  
• Saturday night I did some prep work but left most of it for early Sunday morning. Worked steady for over 3 hours. I find that I am very very slow but part of the enjoyment is taking my time and pottering about.

Here are the recipes I used as a base:
Pistachio Raisin Biscotti
used walnuts instead and some oat flour; didn't rise at all; had to bake much longer than the recipe called for; yummy
Freeze-Ahead Lasagna Primavera
wasn't a huge hit, but may be worth trying again; use zuchinni or summer squash or asparagus in place of the carrots and only 1/2 the spinach; the sauce took a loooooong time to thicken
Tomato-Sausage Lasagna second time for this recipe; you'd think you'd miss the ricotta, but you don't; used 20 oz of the sausage instead of 1 lb and didn't soak the noodles since they were of the no-boil type. The Hunt's organic crushed tomatoes won the taste test hands down. Wonderful flavor and color and RTU without any mashing.
Sweet Ricotta With Chocolate There was no need to drain the ricotta, and, in fact, it might have been better if it were a little more liquid. The cheese to chocolate ratio was off - needed more chocolate. Next time, I'd used 1/2 the cheese but the same amout of chocolate and would serve it already dished into little dishes. The blackberries and raspberries I served alongside were more popular than the ricotta dish but not everybody is used to the idea of cheese for dessert.
I ran out of parm cheese and didn't want to make the Caesar salad without it so I just threw together a romaine salad with some stuff I had on hand: vine on tomatoes, feta cheese, cuke, kalamata olives and the redirected croutons. Quite tasty.

I'd give the meal two thumbs up but the best part was spending time with my dear family and our lovely guests. We had a very nice time together.

Holy Hollyhocks!

I'd forgotten that I had added hollyhocks to my Bluestone Perennials order, so when I was at Wal-Mart today and saw some on sale I nabbed them. The Wal-Mart ones are the standard size, which is really what I wanted in the first place. But now I will have plenty of both!

Other finds at the Wal-Mart seasonal closeout: Dahlias: Seattle and Mystery Day, Peony Bowl of Beauty and Hadspen Blue Hosta.

Lasgana Supper

We're having some friends over tomorrow and I plan to serve a couple kinds of lasagna, my famous Caesar Salad and a ricotta cheese dessert. Biscotti, too, if I get around to making them.

As usual, my recipe source is Everday Food. It's a little warm today to have the oven on but the forecast is for a cooler day tomorrow. I'll bake the biscotti and toast the croutons this evening or early tomorrow.

In conjunction with making this fabulous meal, I am conducting a taste test of four different types of canned tomatoes: Hunts, Flavorite (the store brand), Red Gold and Hunts Organic. The last is crushed, the others are whole, as per the recipe. But I don't know why you wouldn't use crushed, since you need to break them up anyway.

Here's all the stuff I will do ahead:
Caesar Salad

• toast croutons
• wash and tear romaine
• squeeze lemon

Lasagna

• shred gobs of mozzarella
• removing casings from and brown the sausage (I'm using Jennie-O Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage)
• chop one onion
  
• make the red sauce
• defrost and squeeze the spinach
• clean and slice the carrots
• make the white sauce

Biscotti

• chop the walnuts

Sweet Ricotta dessert

• drain the ricotta
• chop the chocolate
• rinse the berries
  

Abe prepared the sun tea (now brewing). We'll serve that to drink plus water and milk. A little wine would go fine with this meal but the folks we've invited are Baptists and don't imbibe.

Both recipes call for NOT boiling the lasagna ahead, a very desirable thing. I'm trying Barilla noodles this time - they're advertised as being the more traditional lasagna shape - short with no crinkling at the edges.

That's the game plan. But right now, I'm going to take a nap.

Sentimental Journey's first public appearance

The women's community chorus that I've been singing with for the past couple months made their first public appearance early this evening at the Baldwin Care Center. There were 7 of us singing (Pam, Holly, Marna, Eunice, Rebbecca, Cheryl and me) with Margaret playing the piano.

The boys and I were the 'opening act'. We're performing 'Farther Along' at church someday soon (Abe's accompanying Mose and me) and we used this as a 'dry run'. I was happy with how we sounded; Abe did an especially nice job.

I think the ladies did all right, too. We sang for about 1/2 hour. Our program was: 'America the Beautiful', 'Harbor Lights', 'Top of the World' (yes, the Carpenters' song), 'Over the Rainbow', 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning', 'When I Grow Too Old to Dream', 'Sentimental Journey' and 'Just a Closer Walk with Thee'. I sang tenor on the last. Pretty low for me so I won't say I was especially strong but we sounded fine on the third verse which we did a cappella.

It was fun when the audience joined in. One couple sat front and center holding hands; the woman gazed at her husband from time to time. That was sweet.

We call ourselves 'Sentimental Journey', a name which captures our choice of music, sweet tunes recalling times gone by.

Friday 5: Shoes

Do you remember the fall of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in 1986 and how his wife Imelda's enormous collection of shoes become a symbol of all that was wrong and corrupt and wasteful? It's said she had 2,700 pairs of shoes.

I'm no Imelda, but I have a lot of shoes and I wish I had more. I have only one purse but many pairs of shoes. If my shoes don't feel right (and I don't mean 'comfortable', I mean 'right') I don't feel right.

Not that I have fabulous shoes or anything or like I'm known as some sort of shoe goddess. But when I'm wearing the right shoes, I feel sense of quiet sense of well being, deep inside :)

Tell me about you and shoes.

1. Describe the shoes you are wearing right now.
2. How many pairs of shoes do you have?
3. What size shoe do you wear?
4. If you were given a Zappos gift card with enough value to buy three more pairs of shoes, what would you buy? Feel free to include links.
5. Write a couple sentences about shoes.