At the vet with the Nose. Nothing bad, just the annual check up for her phenobarbital levels. She's had a good, mostly siezure free year. Only one that lasted not even 3 seconds. She's the most annoying dog when waiting...whine whine whine BARK.

the power of yoga with friends

i could have easily given simon away this morning. easy. i'm not sure why i woke in such a foul mood, but the foot came down on the wrong side of the bed for sure. on what should have been an amazing and joyous day (see post below) i hit a funk i couldn't shake. i would have hints of beauty, like getting to have lunch with my husband. but then the grey cloud would move back over me.

wednesdays are quickly becoming one of my favorite days. for you see, i get to practice yoga with two amazing women evert week at 6:00. i got there tonight and the frustration of the day melted away with each pose, wobble, and laugh.

then the walk home...lovely.

thank you ladies, i had an amazing time. xo

eli

my nephew has entered the world!

6:10 pm on tuesday the 28th of april

weighing in at 8 lbs, 2 oz and 20" in length

i've YET to see pictures...it's killing me!

Two thousand two hundred ninty five

That's the number of characters alloted. Nice. I'm still awake. Still waiting for my sister to have her baby. She's been at the hospital since 10:30 this morning. I got to talk with her while she was having a contraction...obviously it was low on the pain scale meaning they have a long night ahead of them.

My phone is on.

an explanation

i got a new phone (don't worry, we did NOT pay that price for it...I got it free). we have unlimited text. blogger has a mobile post option, costing the regular text fees. remember, we have unlimited. i totally can post from my phone! i am in love with it.

this will be fun. will my blog turn into my own personal twitter? will i start a new trend?

lol

only time will tell

Rest in peace, Bea Arthur. Thank you for being a friend...

Trying something out... Will this post?

seconds

what you see is josie's bedding where i set it while chatting on the phone with my sister. i can't go downstairs while on my phone, it disconnects.

anyway, it took simon mere seconds...

this day

i am excited for what this very day holds for me. in a name, henry. he and his parents are coming over tonight for dinner. i couldn't be more excited.

his mom sent me an email earlier this week, to talk specifics, and told me she'd made the mistake of telling him that they were going to visit us on sunday. that was wednesday. she asked him later on that day what he wanted to do. his response, "go to Aunt Shanny's and see Simon and Josie and that Chloe cat that runs away."

i've been telling chloe her hide and seek friend is coming over today. she just chirped at me.

i'm very happy that they are helping josie become more comfortable around kids, too. henry is the best kid around her. he is respectful of her space, if she walks away and we tell him she needs her space, he gives it to her. josie is slowly warming up to him. although i do remember when she first met him as a baby, she wiggled soooo much. stuck out just the tip of her tongue and gave him a little kiss on his arm. when he was able to move around on his own and it became overwhelming for her.

so, we'll see what this glorious day holds for us all. it is a beautifully sunny day here in portland. i am going to clean the hell out of the house this morning and then bake some lemon cheesecake bars, do some weeding in the yard and garden, and hopefully get a little time in there to work on the dress. the back is almost all done (splitting for the shoulders/neck, knitting up the last two rows. i've started on the front left already, because i am running out of needles to hold stitches. i know i could use yarn, but the needles are so much easier to trnansfer off of.

okay, not going to start rambling about that now. for now, i must go dust!!

waiting for the fork

i am done. i am so done i don't even know where to start this post. perhaps i'll try the beginning.

i got up a little later than the norm and had a quiet morning in the house. kev was still snoozing. he arose an hour after me and when he was done with breakfast he joined me outside in the back yard. we'd gotten the labels off of the bottles from Seder dinner and i wanted to get a bigger chunk of the tomato and pepper bed's border underway. i decided to expand the bed a bit so i removed the four bottles jill and i'd already sunk. it was tough work, but once i got into a groove it went smoothly. i did have to watch the line of bottles to keep them from getting out of alignment, making my veggie bed a trapezoid instead of a rectangle.

kev worked on weeding and put up the rest of the grape arbor pipe while i played with bottles. then i removed a plant that we'd honestly hoped wouldn't make it through the snow. it did. we removed it anyway. it was a real estate hog. it was not really an attractive plant. the only thing it had going for it was the flowers it made, but we didn't love them enough to not dig it out.

while we were moving things around the back, we found a pile of small smooth rocks. we realized it would be nice to have the flower beds in the back a little more bordered off as well and figured the small rocks would work perfectly. so now, on top of collecting wine bottles we will also be collecting rocks (we may break down and buy some).

we took a break for lunch, a much appreciated and loved break. we wrote up a grocery list and kev and i made a deal, we go to the nursery, buy a bit of the ground cover (the kind you can walk on and which we are hoping will take over the mulched pathways in the back...there isn't much in the way of mulch left, really) as well as a couple of shrubs for the front. i would plant them and he would go to costco and the grocery store. i was done and cleaned up by the time he got home.

another deal was made. i would put away the food and he would go get propane. i really think i got the best of both deals, although my back may disagree later tonight or tomorrow. i ripped out a scraggly shrub in the front that was obviously a full sun shrub getting only partial sun/shade. the roots were thick and strong. thank goodness the shovel was strong, too!

we are going to grill burgers tonight. i am going to sit and knit on my dress. i might even drink a little wine (y'all know we are having to drink more now). i am not sure that the day could be made more perfect. i'm willing to see, though.

i planted broccoli

on saturday i picked up my friend jill on the way home from work. she had a bottle to contribute to the 'cause' taking place in our backyard. of course, the rest of the bottles from dinner the night previous were still in the back of our car, with kevin at work. so...we 'planted' the four bottles we had on hand and determined it was going to look really cool when we had all of the beds done.

last night, we brought the bottles from the car inside. currently there are 12 soaking in my sink to loosen the labels. i'm going to leave them there all day in the hopes that the labels simply fall off when i get home tonight from work. if the sun continues as it is right now (shining brightly) i might even get to sink some more bottles. if the ground is too wet, though, i will wait and just get the bottles ready to be sunk.

on the way back to our house on saturday, jill and i stopped by the nearby nursery. we bought broccoli and planted it shortly after arriving home. six little broccoli plants all in a row. very perky now, which makes me smile. i am not sure what to expect with the broccoli. i need to do a little more research as to how many plants produce how large a yield. i'm hoping we'll be happy with six plants and not find we are wanting more. if we get too many, we have neighbors and friends who love broccoli and we have no reservations giving away veggies.

we also planted a few ferns that our neighbor ian, the landscaper, brought home from some job where he ripped them out. they are small, but i think will add some softness to the back fence, under some sad looking arborvitae.

and there was also secret gardening happening, but i can't disclose the details until after my parents are here in may! :) i think they will love the change! i know i do already!

happy monday kids!

how does our garden grow?

well, slowly. but that's okay. the beds are not all planted yet. but we do have garlic sprouting in the large bed on the right and we have planted onions behind the three rows of garlic. red onions and white bunching onions. in that bed we will also plant broccoli and potatoes.

the bed in the back, with the poles, will have green beans again. although this time the entire thing will be used.

between that bed and the long one in front (with the green growth) is a small round bed that you can't really see. it's close to the fence. that will be the zucchini spot. the bed with the growth is going to be corn. the green that is there is still the crimson clover. we will till that under shortly to add nitrates to the soil.

the bed closest to the fence, running perpendicular to the corn, will have asparagus (please oh please oh please grow) as well as spinach, romaine lettuce, and butterhead lettuce. the lettuces and spinach are already planted. no sprouts yet, but we only re-planted a few days ago.

finally, the bed to the right of that will have tomatoes and peppers. i am not sure what kinds we will plant, other than for sure some oregon spring tomatoes! they were so sweet and lovely. AND, as you would guess from the name, they produce early.

so there you have it, our garden. i hope to have more photos throughout the growing season to share our bounty. then again, i'm hoping for a bounty...we'll see what happens.

i love it, gardening by the seats of our pants! :)

tease

mother nature is such a tease. the past three days were the most glorious and beautiful. sun was shining, breeze was blowing, it was perfection in that first truly spring day. then, the clouds started to blow in last night. it got chillier. i see people out on walks with hoods pulled up and coats buttoned to the top.

well, perhaps it will make what work we may be getting ourselves into later today a little easier (you know, it won't be too warm for the hard labor we may be doing). we're hitting the rebuilding center to check out what materials we can use to build the vegetable plots up a bit. not too high, but high enough to let the dog know that it's not okay to walk in the area. while she's not stomping through the planted beds, she is zipping through the ones we've not planted yet. plus the soil is washing away, because currently we've got mounded plots.

i am not sure what we'll find at the rebuilding center, but i best get to measuring the plots to figure out things once we are there.

mother nature, one more day wouldn't have killed you.

hammies

i am very aware that i have hamstrings today. you see, yesterday i decided i would tackle the entire yard and rid it of each and every weed. i had lofty aspirations, needless to say i got a lot done, but only lasted for about six hours before my body said it had had enough. i did stretch and take breaks the entire time (and i did stop for lunch) so i'm sure my hammies are not near as sore as they could be, but man i am fully in the know that they exist.

so why, i ask myself, did i decide to put in another hour tonight?

because i wanted to stake around our garden beds so we can lay reclaimed bricks (well, that's the plan) and make them slightly raised beds. we will probably only build them two bricks high, just enough to give a delineation between bed and pathway. the paths we are thinking of planting ground cover that will withstand being walked on by humans and animals. any ideas of full sun loving ground cover?

i can hardly wait to be able to walk outside barefoot to pick something from my veggie garden...my hammies will surely be talking to me again by then, right?

and the weeding, it just sucked me right into it's evil web of "just one more" any and all gardners know.

my friend ms. crenshaw

years ago, while i was still working on the sales floor full time, i met a woman named ms. crenshaw. she'd come in several days during the month and we'd hit it off really well. finally she asked me, "how can i ask you to go out for a drink, without making you think i'm a lesbian?" i replied, "like that."

shortly after she moved away for grad school. we attempted to be pen pals. with each letter, i felt like a true friendship was being nurtured.

i was right.

she's now back in portland. i couldn't be happier! she is funny and amazing and beautiful. her almost husband is, too! i'm so thrilled to have my ms. crenshaw back in town. i'm also glad that the four of us can go out, have a couple of laughs (and drinks) and get along so well.

ms. crenshaw, your almost husband couldn't be more perfect for you (and vice versa). i'm honored to be invited to your very intimate wedding.

honored.