Lack of Sleep, Lack of Sun, Abundance of Canadians

What have I been doing in the past month or so since I've written a true blog entry? Hmm...

Work
Lots of personnel changes means The Lazy Gardener is not The Lazy Wine Steward. Since I travel from site to site filling in, it's been an especially busy time for me. This is the first week I've had time to breathe, and I'm essentially taking a 3-day weekend.

Home
We had a few nice days a week or so ago (honestly, I've lost track of time), and everything in the yard just seemed to pop. Because of our unseasonably cool weather, a lot of the performers in our yard are a little behind. The Lilacs didn't seem to last as long as usual this year, same with the Dogwood and Golden Chain. The Mock Orange is almost blooming (2 weeks later than usual) and so is the Mountain Laurel.

Remember last month when I planted some seeds in the egg cartons? Yeah, I fried them in the garden window without having remembered to water them for a few days. This was during the freakishly hot weather last week. Incidentally, forgetting to water is why most of my house plants eventually died.

We bought a new minor appliance, which I will write about in another entry.

I'm hoping for a break in the weather to finally got my starts in the ground and a few weeds pulled. The weekend (Mother's Day) I usually plant the tomatoes and such, it was far too wet. The following weekend was far too hot, and I was afraid they would wilt or fry. I don't even care if there's a light drizzle, I will plant my starts. This is Oregon after all. I was born and raised here, so I should hardly let a little rain stop me.

Life
Mother's Day was a little different this year. Normally, The Queen and I go down to Salem to Schreiner's Iris Gardens to stroll through the gardens and purchase 12 cut stems of various iris for a ridiculously small amount of money. But, knowing what was, and wasn't, happening in our yard, I called ahead of time to see what was happening in their gardens. They, too, are about 2 weeks behind.
So instead, The Queen wanted to go to Ikea. Ikea opened a Portland store last year, and she has admired some of the attractive, affordable kitchen paraphernalia Cal and I have purchased. And she was also interested in their ridiculously inexpensive tasty breakfast that I rave about. Breakfast was eaten (I had Swedish Pancakes--yum!), shopping and browsing commenced, and The Queen was duly impressed with amount of goodies she bought for such a small amount of money.

That night, I went with 6 of my friends to see Kids in the Hall, the Canadian comedy troupe extraordinaire who recently reunited and are currently touring. Four of us have been huge fans since...well, a long time (the other 3 in the group were significant others.) A few of us have even had a contest going to see how many Kids we could meet before they die ("Better hurry, then," as Dave Foley told Paige when she met him on the set of "NewsRadio" some years back.) Kevin and Bruce have been the elusive ones, although honestly, since we met Dave, Mark, and Scott in 2000, we have settled into our adult lives and haven't had the time or money to travel around fulfilling a silly dream.
...This time, however, our silly dream came to us.
As for the contest, AudGirl, Paige, and I all won together! Some members of our party, however, didn't think it was such a big deal since all they had to do was show up to one show in one city. We didn't let their smugness get us down. We're still beaming.

Divide and (not quite) conquer

Today was one of those February days in Portland that teases and titillates.

Sunshine!

60 degrees!

Singing birds!

Goodness, it must be springtime!

Okay, not quite. But we're getting close. I acquired my first purchased flowers of the season, 2 sweet primroses from my grandfather. After he divided them from the tray this afternoon, he rushed me out the door because he wanted to make sure they would make it home without dying, because I insisted on putting them in a temporary container that was too small, and which he insisted on loading up with potting soil.

"Papa, I'll be home in half an hour, they'll be fine."

"Well...alright. But go right home and plant them."

(Please don't tell him I stopped at the market for dinner ingredients. He might stroke out.)

A side note on my grandfather and flowers: Since my grandmother passed away last year, he has been almost religious in keeping with many of the gardening practices she kept. For instance, the strip along the driveway must be planted with the correct color of geraniums. And the section under the eve on the south side of the house must be planted with the correct number of begonias. I'm not even kidding.

Since the weather was so nice, I thought it wise to take advantage of it and work on a project and not just sit inside, fold laundry, and watch bad television Law & Order on TNT. It was imperative that I dig up and divide up my dahlia tubers this year. By the time I got around to it last year, it was too late and the dahlias were already sprouting up.

Oh.
My.
Stars.

Let's not skip a year again, k? Out of the 11 different tuber masses I dug up, no fewer than 5 of them had to be put into full-sized paper grocery bags for temporary storage. A couple of them were even double-bagged for safety reasons. My point is (in case you're lost): I have many, many dahlia tubers. And we're running out of space in our garden beds right now, until we take out more lawn and the crappy shrubs I don't like. Luckily, I seem to have many friends in town who are not only willing, but excited to take some off my hands.

I expect in a few years, I will be getting an email from these friends asking if I'm in need of dahlia tubers. What goes around comes around, I guess.

I'm pretty sure that--somewhere, somehow--my Nana is laughing at me

In true holiday form for me, I decided to make something last-minute in the kitchen.

My grandfather has been feeling particularly lonely and blue lately, so I thought a batch of his special fudge Nana used to make him would be in order. I remember as a kid being fascinated by the fact that Papa had his own special fudge that would sit in a covered candy dish on the side table next to his rocking chair. I always thought it was disgusting--dark, dense, and on the bitter side. Why would anyone eat that when they could have some the other fudge, the "Fantasy Fudge", that was basically brown-flavored marshmallow fluff. That's really what it's called--"Fantasy Fudge"--I didn't just make that up.

Now, as an adult, I really appreciate his kind. Sure, it's still sugary, but I like dark chocolate better than milk chocolate. So when I was down visiting last week, I pulled out Nana's old recipe box and copied down the recipe for "Jackson's Fudge", as she had written on the card.

Side note: Anyone who has ever looked at old recipes from family members can tell you that often these recipes aren't complete or even precise. You are as likely to find "a handful of flour" on the ingredient list as you are to find an ingredient list without cooking/baking instructions following it. The latter was true of this recipe, but a quick search on the internet solved the dilemma. Thanks, Al Gore!

So I set to making the fudge last night. I had even bought a candy thermometer so I would know when the temperature reached "soft ball stage." But dang it, it never got hot enough, it just kept boiling and boiling...and boiling, until the moisture had nearly evaporated. A quick test using the "old-fashioned" method of putting a drop of the fudge in a dish of cold water told me that it had indeed reached soft ball stage. But probably 10 minutes earlier. It was most likely closer to hard crack stage when I tested it (and not that kind, either. At least I could have sold some of that to make a bit of cash.) So I immediately pulled it off the heat and added the butter and vanilla, during which the fudge started to set up and I had to scrape hard, dried up chocolate stuff out of the pan and spatula. It definitely still tastes fine, but it's dry and crumbly.

Papa's not getting any fudge this year.

By 'Spirit' do you mean Bourbon? Yes, I've got some.

I had every intention of calling off Christmas this year.

Obviously, my years in retail have jaded me just a little bit to the joy I used to find in the season.

But far beyond that, my grandmother--who passed away in March--was one of the biggest fans of Christmas I have ever met. Not Christmas as in Christ's birthday (I would characterize my family as largely atheist), and not Christmas as in super-tacky lawn/outdoor decor like those ridiculous inflatable snow-globes people have in their yards or a plethora of lights that light up the neighborhood even on the darkest of nights.

Nana's decorating consisted mostly of the same decorations she'd had since my mom and uncles were small--never-burned wax candles and figurines--and the collection of ornaments she had collected over the years that were always perfectly arranged on a perfect Noble Fir tree. In fact, the trees she selected year after year were so similar to each other, it prompted my cousin when he was younger to ask if the tree that was currently up and decorated was the same one she had the year before.

One tradition my grandmother started when my older and younger cousin and I were young was to buy an ornament for us every year. She continued to do this for her 5 grandchildren until last Christmas. The oldest one I could find was from 1976 (I was 6 years old.) In my adult life, I have only had a Christmas tree a few times, but have found ways to display my fairly large ornament collection either on wreaths or wires strung across a mantle.

This year, I resisted the spirit of Christmas as long as I could. The other night, though, I was at the store and saw 15' cedar garlands for sale, which I envisioned out on mantle with some decorations nestled in and others hanging from the wire The Husband put up a few years ago.
The result?




Speaking of The Husband (who I might not categorize as someone who gets in the spirit...) surprised me a couple of weeks ago by having me come home to this:

O-H!

I-O!

It's where I've been lately, walking and driving the beautiful maple, birch, and sycamore (and of course buckeye) filled roads and trails of Mohican State Park and northeastern Ohio. Spending time with family (the in-laws) is always so very fun, and I love to travel and see new things.

But it's always great to come home, too.

Until I can collect my thoughts, pictures, and up on my sleep, this is what you get for a blog entry from me.

If you're interested, my friend Amy had some great news regarding how she will spend next summer. Pretty amazing!