Garden Talk

(and how I want to grow old here)

I have a long response to the stupid rude commenter from yesterday, and it's pretty good, but for now I'm going to leave it unsaid. I do feel that my parenting needs some defending but so many of my lovely blog friends made such good responses that I don't feel the need at the moment to justify why I sometimes put Max in a dark closet when it's too inconvenient to deal with him.

Do I actually need to tell anyone here that I'M JUST KIDDING!!?

I think Pam said it best: SUCK IT.

I was really stressed out yesterday because the sun has come out to scorch all of the plants I didn't get in the ground this past week-end. We have only one hose spigot for the whole yard which is in the front of the house, far from most of the yard. So I need to call a plumber to get another one installed because trying to water your whole garden with a watering can is INSANE, even if it is a pretty aqua color.

When I was done getting my wilted plants and roses in the ground I actually sat down for a half an hour to listen to the hens make their little evening noises like cooing and chirping. I so rarely take the time to do that.

Beware: Boring Garden Talk Ahead...

Now, if only I could figure out a really easy way to get rid of all of our lawn. The problem is that here in the PNW you don't want to have all dirt because dirt+rain=endless mud on the dog and the kid. You have to have something on the ground which costs money. What I really want is crushed granite because it makes a great water permeable surface that suppresses weeds and is soft enough to walk on barefoot and looks really warm and wonderfully Mediterranean. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a source for it in my vicinity and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to afford it. Yet. In the meantime the grass is seeding itself because it's so long and we hate it.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Oh crap. There's more coming...

I am thinking about solarizing my smaller patch of lawn with all the nasty thick black plastic we've unearthed. Now is the perfect time and maybe by next year we could afford something nice for ground cover that isn't lawn. Killing the lawn now, during the warm weather, is a good move. Besides, that bit of lawn is absolutely filled with bindweed. Bindweed actually makes the prettiest flowers but it is so vigorous and like so many pretty things has an ugly choking nature. Let bindweed go in your yard and it will kill everything it can get it's tendrils wrapped around.

Oh Lord...it's a flower list! For garden geeks only...

I got so many wonderful flowers planted: coreopsis, verbena, black eyed susan, Shasta daisies, Grandmother's pincushion, lupine, cosmos, daylillies, iris, million bells, heliotrope, penstemon, and yellow and purple wallflowers. Many of these make great cut flowers. Quite a few of them are perennials so I won't have to replant them. I also have twenty one roses. Most of them ones that I chose for myself as opposed to finding here already. At our last house we had thirty roses and only one of them had scent. We wouldn't have chosen those varieties ourselves though we did learn to appreciate them anyway. This time only four of our roses were already here. The rest of them have been picked out by me.

Now I just have to get some vegetables in the garden and it will feel like home. I realized that part of my elevated stress is due to trying to get my new home established. It's always like this in the beginning. We still haven't got everything unpacked. Close, but still there are boxes and some things have been unloaded into shelves rather carelessly so that finding them is hard enough, putting them away is pure drudgery. The yard isn't ours yet because we haven't had a chance to put our own touch on it (until this week-end) and so caring for it isn't the same joy that it is once we've transformed it into a more personal expression that doesn't include rhododendrons and lawn.

Life philosophy coming up. Isn't that typical?

Settling in means building garden beds, building the chicken run, putting hooks in the house where hooks are needed, and making curtains to replace hideous vertical vinyl blinds. It's work. It takes time. And when you have to spend most of your time looking for work, or have trips to make, it just doesn't get done fast. Especially if you're still fighting against the great tide of inertia created by your body just to make everything extra hard.

I am remembering how it felt the same way at our house on Beaver Street. The windows all leaked, the yard had to be completely worked over, the awful blinds had to be replaced, and we had a baby at the time so everything had to be done almost in slow motion. It was torture at times to be that uncomfortable but within a year everything fit better, worked better, looked better, and we enjoyed the hell out of that house in the end.

I learned a long time ago not to say "never". So I still try to avoid such an impossible word. Intention may not be impressive to most people, all that paving to hades and all, but I think intention is important. Intention is a directional decision. It states where you plan to go.

I intended to grow old and die in my last dream house. The one we had to leave. Here I am in another house I could grow old in. How can I state my intention here without attracting the evil eye of the universe? I've had to move a lot in my life and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of settling into new homes. Tired of rebuilding gardens from scratch. I'm tired of building new chicken runs and having to get used to new kitchens. I'm tired of packing and unpacking.

I want to stay here. I feel like I would do almost anything to keep this house and grow old here. I want to live here long enough to pick plums from my trees. I want to live here long enough to get so bored with my garden layout that I feel compelled to replant it. I don't get bored easily. I'd like to stay here until I'm so old I get to complain about the stairs every day to my caretaker.

Basically it boils down to this: I don't ever want to have to move again. Is that too much to ask? Do people of my generation ever get to settle down? I love it here and I want to stay right where I am until I die.

Daily Eye Candy

It is so easy to overlook the naturally occurring vignettes in my own home when so much of my house and garden frequently looks like a great big snake pit. We are not tidy people. I'm in the middle of cleaning right now but wanted to post this eye candy that caught my eye as I was putting bird netting on the chicken run to keep Dot from getting out.* This climbing rose is sprawling around the "pond" and would love to climb the garage. I am going to put some wiring up to help it. It doesn't have scent but the flowers seem to be prolific and the color is delicious.

I am going to look at my space as a bunch of pleasing vignettes waiting to rise out of the slovenly mess. Perhaps I should look at my house as I hope that an employer will look at me: great bones, a little cleaning up, a little training and she'll be perfect for us! Sometimes you have to give things a chance to shine.

*She got to the top of the run where Chick was waiting to sniff her feathery butt. Honestly? I was expecting that to be a bloody situation. My dog finds new ways to surprise me every day. Apparently all she wants to do is run free with all of nature peaceably. I love my dog.

This Humble Mustard

One of the things I love most about urban homesteading is that the movement* is largely filled with rebel gardeners and cooks actively engaged in returning traditional foods to the home cook and away from the corporations who have come to be regarded as the sole proprietors of such condiments as mustard. People have been growing and using mustard for hundreds of years. How is it that so few of us actually know how to make this simple condiment? Because I can no longer purchase my favorite prepared mustard (due to it's not being remotely local) I decided it was high time I learn to make it myself.

Gulden's is a fairly mild mustard and it has few ingredients: mustard seeds, vinegar, turmeric, spices. That's it. No sugar, no flour, no fancy stuff. I'm taking it on faith here that "spices" isn't code for "BUCKETS OF CREEPY CRAP".

I've been searching for simple mustard recipes and found only fancy "gourmet" types with lots of fancy ingredients like wine and shallots. I have no objection to wine and shallots but I would like to learn a basic mustard first. I bought some yellow mustard seeds from Azure Standard and put 3/4 of a cup in a nonreactive bowl then covered it with white vinegar.

While performing this easy first step I was playing Israeli folk music complete with a spirited version of "Hava Nagila". Now I have to let the seeds steep for two or three days. I was planning on just making it today, lickety split, and posting the results for Sara who is going to make some mustard too. However, of the limited recipes I found out there, most of them have you soaking your seeds for "two or three days". OK.

I went to the gym this morning and was wearing this really hideous un-white t-shirt that I've had for a million years and is the only one that is big enough to still fit me. I came home and was about to spend the whole day in that deeply ugly garment when I realized that Sara and I were planning on being "cute and domestic" while making mustard and then share the results on our blogs since I can't actually invite her over to make some with me here in person. I don't have any cute clothes to wear but I did put on make-up and put in my nose ring and I even wore earrings. This picture proves it!

Before embarking on my really simple first step to mustard making I had to go to the store. On my scooter. In the pouring rain. I don't mind getting a little wet. Unfortunately, riding a scooter in the rain is like whizzing through air full of sharp darts. Ouch. I was hoping you would see how wet my face got but it doesn't show up well. People always suggest you can only ride such a toy in the fine weather...which is not true. So if anyone still doesn't believe I go out on it in the rain...

This should prove it! I realize how impressed you already are with my musical taste and it seems so cruel to follow that up with proof of how tough I am in real life, but I can't hide the truth. It's so much easier to live with weather-frightened fruitcakes who cook in gentle cozy kitchens. Ha. Say that ten times fast.

As for the question of houses...much thinking has been done here at the Williamson ranch concerning the Williamson ranch. I don't want a farm. I want what I have. Exactly what I have. OK, I really do want a kitchen that doesn't suck and I want my house to stop looking like a wet band-aid, but I don't need a farm for myself when there are so many local farms to support around here who are producing vegetables with u-pick options that make it affordable to buy their produce for canning. I can grow a hell of a lot more on this property than I have and if I stay here long enough my mini orchard will bear tons of fruit and what fires up my excitement endlessly is how much more self sufficient all of us can become who don't have a large piece of property. I want to be a part of that. I'm an urban homesteader, not a farmer.

As for the fear of losing it after putting tons of work and love into it? The fear that if I get attached to it's humble studs I will have to hand it off to someone else like I had to do with my last house? There's nothing I can do about it. You just have to live as though you get to keep the things and the people you love and let go of them when they're gone.

Besides, Alice heard that the world is going to end in 2012 which will make all of these huge worries seem pretty insignificant by comparison. I just hope I get to eat a whole lotta good food and drink a whole lotta good beer before we all get sucked into a black hole of nonexistence. Hey, can you bring beer with you into a black hole?



*I can't understand why no one else is calling it a movement yet, but that's what it is. It's too rebellious to be a "lifestyle" and too fundamentally wholesome to be a cult. What else do you call people who are taking the power back from the corporate sector of our country by becoming as self reliant as possible in an urban and suburban setting?

When Houses Speak

We chose the pink paint. I loved my pink house with the dark green trim. I don't have a better picture of this house because most of my good ones were stored on my old hard drive that crashed right before we moved out of state. Seriously, California was shoving us out in every possible way.

After writing yesterday's post about putting my feet on the ground I got to thinking about my obsession with houses. It is, perhaps, particularly on my mind because of a post I read about someone else's adventure with her house and the fact that houses speak to her. I share that experience. I believe that the house you live in is like a spiritual shell and therefore one should choose their homes carefully. Some houses are sorrowful, some full of happy memories, some have wild stories in the walls, some carry a thousand unanswerable questions, some are toxic, and some don't speak at all.

Back when I was thirteen or fourteen my parents were looking at houses in our town. I don't know why. At some point I decided it was an effort to make change in hopes of saving their marriage but that may be wholly untrue. They found this really big house on top of Wimer Heights and took us to see it. It was modern and had wall to wall carpeting. It had big windows which might have been impressive had it not been for the bleakness of the neighborhood it was in. It was a house for wealthy people. The kind of large showpiece you buy when you start to make money. To this day I can remember the cold sunshine washing over the grey carpet and the howling wind outside cutting a hole in my happiness. I felt the fiercest need to never go back there. I knew that if I had to live there I would die. I knew that the wind would never stop whistling through those windows because it never stops blowing on that hill.

Until I found our stucco house in Santa Rosa I had a continuous dream of returning to my childhood home in Ashland on Scenic Drive. It's been in my dreams almost non stop since I had to suddenly move away from it when my parents divorced. There were lots of bad memories to leave behind in it, but the house itself wasn't sad. The house took care of me. It had good bones and the wonderful details you can only find in homes built before the forties. I loved it completely.

Several years ago when I found our dream house I knew it the second I walked into it. I just knew I was meant to move into it. It was an almost impossible transaction. A desirable house in a great location about fifty thousand dollars out of our price range. It was a gorgeous stucco early thirties Tudor style house with gorgeous original windows- the living room window was almost floor to ceiling, a great big curved multi paned affair. The light in the house was wonderful. The layout was great. The yard was big. I walked in and knew it was the house I wanted to grow old in. Somehow the house also knew it and against the odds, we got it.

Our current house.

Is it possible to be in love with a house? And if you have to leave a house you're in love with, is it possible for your heart to break? Because that's what happened. I came to McMinnville to find us a house. There wasn't a lot on the market in March 2006 and very little of what I found was vintage. I don't like new houses. I actually really dislike them. I like old houses. Old houses with fine bones. Ones with the original wood paned windows still intact. The only ones on the market were either in really bad repair or had postage stamp yards. When I found the house we're living in it was the shiniest best thing out there. The yard is almost twice the size of our old one. The house is solid, it's been extremely well cared for, and it was a reasonable price.

But it lacks fine detail. It has mostly hardwood floors which is nice and a brick fireplace and a brick gas fireplace. However, most of the windows in the house are typical mid century ranch style and are tiny. The air circulation in the house stinks. The layout is awkward. Many of the rooms are dark with inadequate light fixtures. The bedrooms are tiny and the ceilings are not high*. The kitchen is ridiculously small and poorly planned for someone like me who spends so much time in it. While some mid century ranch houses boast interesting roof lines and cool funky details, ours is as plain as they come.

The question is: how do you fall in love with such an architecturally mediocre house? Every time I start to feel alright that I live in a boring house, I see pictures of other people's old farm houses, or their thirties cottages and I feel a physical pain in my heart. Every time I walk through the vintage neighborhoods and see the pretty windows and the lovely arched doorways, or the big old porches, I feel my spirit reaching out.

Can the house I live in be so important? Can a person who's only ever been happy in old houses find real happiness and joy in a featureless fifties ranch house? Will I always pine stupidly for an older home? I realized yesterday that it is my lack of enthusiasm for this house that has made it difficult to settle into it. The truth is, I'm still in love with my old house. I feel like there are questions that need answering such as: did we lose the dream house because we didn't deserve to have something so elegant? Is the lesson I'm supposed to learn to be happy with whatever I have and let go of what I thought I wanted? Yet, I had already been happy with what I had.

Or was it all just bad luck with no attached lessons? A part of me keeps thinking that some day we'll find another wonderful old house with a big yard. Maybe an old farmhouse on an acre or two. Yet if I let myself wander around with those desires in my heart then how will I ever settle into this one? A part of me doesn't believe I'll ever be able to love this house because it isn't the kind of shell my spirit needs.

What if I really invest myself here in this ranch? What if I put all my energy into somehow (how?) making it fun and pretty and interesting to live in and then life pulls me out of my house again?

I'm not depressed right now, by the way. My happiness from yesterday has not diminished. It's just that these questions have been lurking under the surface all this time. I am just realizing how I have not been able to stop loving my old house and longing for my old kitchen and my old gorgeous living room and my pretty bedroom from which I could see the whole back yard and watch the weather turn.

I don't miss or long for my old city in my old state. Moving to Oregon was (for me) an act of pure dream fulfillment. I belong in Oregon. It didn't even take thirty seconds to love being back in this state. This region, the people here, the landscape, the weather- all of it I cherish. It is only a question of houses.

I have had a plan to apply a little vintage 40's kitsch into the decor. A little vintage Hollywood version of life in a ranch house. Back then a ranch house evoked something specific like the wide open western skies beneath which you moved hundreds of heads of cattle by day and lived rustically comfortable by night underneath the dim glow of your wagon-wheel chandelier. Angela coined the style name "Lucy Goes West" which perfectly captures what I plan to go for.

As I wade through all these thoughts, uncomfortable with how sentimental it makes me sound (I'm not), I feel bad for this house. It has no bad stories to tell. We are keeping the linen closet door inside which the growth of all three of the Meyers' children was recorded over the years. It was loved and it feels like it was loved. We wouldn't have bought the house if it didn't have a good feeling in it. It's plainness means it's more humble which is perfectly in keeping with our circumstances. Can I bring it alive in such a way that I stop feeling pangs of envy every time I walk into someone else's charming vintage home with all it's sweet details?

Can I make it charming enough that when I pull into the driveway I feel pleasure just sitting there looking at it as I did with my old home?

I am fortunate to have my own home at all. If I sit around worrying about the very real possibility that we may have to sell it if our income situation doesn't improve then I waste time. Who has time to waste? My new quilt makes me happy. This house just needs lots of attention and paint. It needs to be given the benefit of the doubt that it can be prettied up enough to make people with cute cottages kind of wish they had a charming funny simple ranch house.

That's my cue to get into the studio and put together the two orders I'm working on, because every penny means a better chance at keeping what we already have. Then, I will work on a backing for the quilt. Oh yeah, and a slip cover for my chair in the living room... and kitchen curtains...and paint chips to pore over...


*I don't care for the 15' ceilings that new houses often come with either-too much wasted space to collect cobwebs in.