Checking In

Hello, there! It's been an absurdly long time since my last post - life has been busy! Things have happened! For example:
  
I moved out of the shoebox apartment where I spent a great 2.5 years, and joined forces with Bill at the house he has lived at since before I met him.

We share the house with two roommates and a cat, have a small but lovely garden, and the spare bedroom became "my room," where all of my stuff lives and I have a sewing table and a futon for guests.

Life is so much easier without our constant going back and forth between each other's homes, although there are the small irritations of living with housemates (lack of space in the fridge being a primary one for me), although the housemates themselves are excellent people. Most of my kitchen gear is in storage in the basement since the house was well furnished already, so it will be fun unpacking it all someday.

It's been an unnervingly hot and dry summer in the northwest, but we've made the most of it. Sail camping, a fantastic backpacking trip in the North Cascades, a family reunion in Port Townsend, and my birthday at a cousin's new farm - this summer has been one of the best.

 

Day four of five in the North Cascades

Point Wilson lighthouse and Admiralty Inlet

How I spent my 31st birthday

 A summer ritual

It's been summer since April, with weeks of temperatures over 95 F, and even if the entire American West wasn't burning right now, I'd be ready for fall. But now we're praying for rain and here, at the edge of September, I am absolutely looking forward to cooler nights, wool socks, red leaves and baked squash. I've got some new autumn-y projects to work on which I will share here, as once again I try to revive my writing a bit. I hope you're all well, and I look forward to spending more time here in the coming weeks.

Happy-making

Recently I've been paying more attention to the little everyday pleasures that make me happy, and I thought I'd share some of them here.

First, though, the biggest happy-making news:

 Last Thursday, March 27th, I was given the gift of a brand new niece! 

Margaret Auburn Rose was born, healthy and strong, at midday in Spokane, Washington. She is the first child of my brother and sister-in-law and the first grandchild on both sides. There was a lot of jumping for joy, and many many happy tears, and a huge amount of relief on my sister-in-law's behalf after the four days (!!) of labor. As you might imagine, I can hardly wait to meet little Margaret and it's suddenly extra frustrating to live 450 miles away! However, I am heading up on April 16th, when my brother goes back to work, to help out for a good long stretch and be there for her Christening on Easter Sunday. A week and a half until then, and I am practically counting down the minutes.

 ____________

Now then: here are a few little everyday things that have been making me happy of late:

Finally branching out from my usual bread making routine

 Delicious smoothies to use up last summer's frozen berries (made using my immersion blender)

Flowers inside.

QI.

My favorite houseplant, steadily wending its way around my east-facing window with a strand of yarn for a trellis. 

 PG Tips with sugar, milk and fresh mint.

Homey Dreams

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always have those future dreams, of the kind of house and garden I want someday, permanently. I'm pretty content with what I have now, knowing it is very affordable and comfortable and pretty great for the point I am at in my life. But still, those dreams pop into the front of my mind once in awhile...usually in the winter when I am getting restless for the options and comfort of summer. Here are a few, mostly things I have had a taste of at some point and found how well they suited me.

A sewing/craft project room

One of my biggest roadblocks to tackling larger sewing projects is the lack of space to spread out, and to always have my sewing machine set up and ready to go. How I would love, someday, to have a room (or half a room) that can simply be a dedicated sewing/crafting area. A nice broad table with my sewing machine set up on it, and shelves where my fabric, yarn and notions can be stored in plain view and easy reach. Thread stored on a thread rack (preferably handmade), and with a bit of luck a nice big window right over the table for lots of light.

 Something in this vein...but maybe more colorful.

Photo credit home-designing.com

A pantry

I grew up with one, and there's just no way around how awesome it is to have a room, however small, that is dedicated solely to food and other kitchen-related storage. Get those canned goods and spare jars out of my kitchen cupboards, and the less-frequently-used kitchenware out of the way. I would love to re-create my parents' sunny yellow pantry; they have their fridge in there to open up space in the kitchen, and last time I was home, my mom had added another set of shelves, custom built to fit the Adams peanut butter jars that they use to store dehydrated herbs and veggies.

Yes, please. 

Photo credit New England Home Magazine

A proper garden

And by proper, I mean big. Big enough to grow plenty of food, plus herbs and flowers. How nice it will be, one day, to just be able to pop out the back door to pick veggies for dinner, or to weed for a few minutes, rather than plan a trip to my community garden. When I own a place, I can plant more long-term things, like strawberries and asparagus and maybe fruit trees. To build a garden from scratch, of my own design, not the previous owners'....well, a gardener can dream, right?

(Have you ever searched for images of gardens on the internet? The possibilities are endless and amazing. And a bit overwhelming.)

Photo credit Garden Diggings

Chickens (again)

Maybe just three next time, but I miss their beautiful and delicious eggs, their hilarious and exasperating chicken-ness, the way you can feed them all the weeds and slugs from the garden. Someday.

(Photo credit Me!)

The list goes on, of course, but these are the ones that stay constant. Dreaming about them is such fun; sometimes the anticipation of something is just as enjoyable as the thing itself.

Some New Year's Organizing

I just had a four-day weekend, because of the holiday on Monday, and I spent most of it at home, catching up on cleaning and organizing and dealing with everything that had piled up (literally) during the past month or so. The last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January were very trying, with way too much time spent in hospitals and doctors' offices and stuck in bed, as well as a lot of time spent away from my apartment while Bill recovered from his surgery at his place. During that time, my brain had to recalibrate in terms of what tasks and errands around the house were really necessary, and what I could let slide so as to not overextend myself. Now that I'm feeling much better and more energetic, it was time to tackle all of the little things that had been let go.

First priority of the weekend, though, was to get out of town for a change of scenery. Portland had been having some very strange foggy weather, but the weather report for the coast was excellent on Friday. Bill and I headed west on Friday morning, and spent the day soaking up the sunshine and fresh salty breeze at the coast, admiring the incredible views from Ecola State Park, and taking in a gorgeous sunset at Cannon Beach.

Back in town, I felt very energized and spent Saturday working away on a variety of chores to get my apartment shipshape again. There was dishwashing and laundry and the usual chores, and in between those I tackled some other jobs. First, I cleaned out my desk. For the past month, my desk had been sitting open, and I had just been stuffing all manner of things into it, and leaving them there: medical bills, pay stubs, books, Christmas cards, etc. I cleared it all out, sorted through, filed away the things that were necessary to keep, recycled or shredded the rest, and organized what was left. Now I can actually close it, and it makes the front room look much tidier.

In the kitchen, I tackled something I think everyone has to face at some point: the dreaded tupperware cupboard. I had gotten a new set of good sturdy containers (mostly for freezing food in) with one of my Christmas gift cards, but there was no room left in the cupboard, which was also a total disaster zone, completely disorganized. One problem was that, having eaten through a lot of the food I canned this summer, there was a glut of empty mason jars filling up the shelves, and more taking up space on the counter. I shifted things around, and stowed away most of the empty jars behind the remaining canned goods in other cupboards. That freed up enough space to fit the rest of the jars and containers neatly into the cupboard. I got rid of all the odd containers and lonely lids too, and it all looks spick and span now. Hopefully I can make it stay that way for awhile.

The next issue was mold. My apartment gets a lot of condensation on the windows in the winter, but what with one thing and another, I had not been running my dehumidifier as much this winter as I did last year, and thus ended up with a horrifying amount of black mold on the windowsills. Ugh. So I tackled it with soap and water, scrubbed off as much as I could, wiped all the surfaces with vinegar, and then dried them and wiped on a coating of tea tree oil. Hopefully that will do the trick, and I will be much more vigilant about running the dehumidifier for the rest of the winter.

I didn't get the knitting done that I wanted to, but I did get the loose ends woven in on a baby sweater that's been sitting in my knitting basket for months, and then blocked it. I'm going to try and put snaps on this one (with a ribbon backing) instead of buttons.

 Someday I'll make myself a proper blocking board. Until then, a piece of a cardboard box, a dishtowel and sewing pins it is...

My final organizing job yesterday was to deal with my garden box. The majority of the seeds in there were packed for 2010, so they all got culled, and the remainder were organized and sorted back into the box. Then some garden planning, lists of seeds to order for this year, and a timeline for planting was made. I'm not going to be hugely ambitious with the garden this year, I have less space for doing so since a good quarter of my garden is currently taken up with garlic.

Last night, I dusted and scrubbed and swept, and got my apartment feeling sparkly clean for the beginning of the week. It's such a good feeling, especially for a neat freak like me.

Green Amid the Gray

I think I did a post like this last year...it's always this time of year when the gray and the rain all become too much and I go actively searching for green growing things to hold me over until we start to get a few signs of spring outside.

The new year didn't start off quite as I had hoped. Just before I was supposed to be returning to work, I was admitted to the hospital for 24 hours with a very un-fun infection. It's all in hand now, I'm being barraged with antibiotics and was able to go back to work on Tuesday. The extremely good news is that my healthcare provider/company is covering all of my medical costs (surgery plus the later hospitalization) since I am on the lower income end of things. It is a massive, massive relief that I have only my student debt to contend with as the new year begins.

As soon as I returned to work, the rain hit. It's been a remarkably dry couple of months, much to the skiers' chagrin- there's really only a couple feet of snow on the mountain, when there should be many many feet of snow. Now it's raining in town and snowing up high, and I know we need the moisture but it's hard to be grateful for rain when everything is cold and soggy and the low clouds make it get darker half an hour earlier than it would otherwise.

I headed over to my garden on my lunch break yesterday. I haven't been to visit it since the end of October, and only have garlic, leeks and collards growing. I always plant garlic in mid-October, and have never had it sprout earlier than Christmas. This year, I planted it two weeks later than usual, and it was four inches tall three weeks later. What the heck, overenthusiastic garlic? We had a big old cold snap at the beginning of December, but I hadn't yet gotten a chance to run over the garden and see if my silly garlic had survived the hard frosts.

It would seem that it has! The tips of the leaves are definitely a little worse for wear, but it all seems to be alive and growing. The collards bit the dust, and the leeks are also a little yellowed along the edges, but otherwise all seems to be well.

Back at home, my New Year's present to myself was a whole bunch of green growing things to have around inside my apartment. A big row of paper whites on the windowsill has been brightening my days and sending their nice aroma all over the apartment. Since my poor old geraniums gave up the ghost a couple months ago (they were five years old), I got three new house plants to keep plenty of green around.

I also realized it's time to order seeds for this year's garden. I haven't given the garden much thought the last couple months, but now, with the restlessness of midwinter, it is the perfect time to pull out my seed box and figure out what to grow this year. Most of my pepper and tomato seed will be several years old at this point so I'll be starting fresh with most things. Exciting!

A Mountain Tree

My Christmas tree this year is a wild one! I loathe the perfectly uniform farmed trees, but not as much as I loathe not having a tree at all, so for the past several years, I've purchased a small one from one of the Christmas tree lots in town. None of them have remotely resembled the trees I grew up with, cut from my parents property. But a couple years ago, I discovered that you can buy a permit for just $5, which allows you to cut a tree in the National Forest. Last year I didn't have a tree, and this year Bill was excited about the adventure too, so on Sunday afternoon we drove up to Mt. Hood. We stopped to buy the permit, and headed up one of the many National Forest roads branching off of the main highway on the lower part of the mountain. We didn't leave ourselves a lot of daylight, so we didn't go too far, but a short wander up the snowy road and we found the perfect fir tree on the edge of the road (as well as the biggest mountain lion tracks I've ever seen. So cool. Also, spooky.).

Apparently our spatial skills were lacking somewhat. I knew we'd have to give the tree a haircut to make it fit in the corner of my apartment, but when we got the tree inside, we both cracked up, because it took up exactly half of my living room.

 Bill's having a snack after landlocking himself behind the tree. We were both on the verge of getting hangry by the time we got back to my place.

I had to cut at least a foot off of all the lower branches, and more off the back, so it would fit back against the wall in the corner. Handy, because this gave me some extra greenery for decorating my apartment and office. I'm very happy with it. For me, this is what a Christmas tree should look like: not groomed, not uniform, covered with multi-colored lights and an eclectic mix of ornaments.

My tree has lots of birds on it this year (not a Portlandia reference, I swear. I just like birds.). I already had a number of bird ornaments, and then I got sucked into one of the many antique shops in my neighborhood last week and found a bag of these beautiful and hilariously perky ones from Japan, which now are perched all over my tree.

Only two weeks till Christmas! (How the heck did that happen?!)

October

For as long as I've had a favorite month, October has been it. So much goodness, indoors and out. There's something in the air that brings up nostalgia, even for memories that didn't take place in the fall. This October has been particularly beautiful, bright crisp days and incredible leaves. I've been eating squash on a multiple-times-per-week basis. I made the first apple pie of the season last weekend. I've been knitting away for upcoming babies and Christmas presents--needles and wool are perfect for this time of year. I had to dig out my earband, insulated gloves and wool knee socks for my morning bike commute. Also, can I recommend taking a photography class in the fall? Being able to soak up the beauty of fall while learning how to make the best use of my camera is incredibly fulfilling. Thank you, October, for being wonderful.