Welcome To The Asylum

(well, I can't name it "rose cottage" can I?)

Philip doesn't think "The Rose And Thorn Farmhouse" is a good name for a house. So I suggested "The Sanatorium" and he's actually thinking that one over.* Though, truth be told, he's not too keen to name our house at all. He said "Why can't we just call it 'The Farmhouse'?" and I promptly told him it didn't sound enough like a special place that someone might write a book about.

This is a picture of our front porch. It faces the back yard. It's big and will be hung with Chinese lanterns I think. There will be a table and chairs to sit at and drink coffee plus pretty pots of growing things to welcome the weary (us).

I love lilacs. The French name is so much prettier: syringa. I have wanted lilacs in my yard for years. It was the lilac that first made me understand the deep satisfaction in picking a glorious vase of flowers to scent and decorate the house. My mother gave me huge bunches of them from her lilac tree when we all lived in Petaluma together. They grow wonderfully well up here and are all over town.

I had planned on planting one in my current garden but would have had to remove some giant rhododendrons to do it and risk getting reported to the local garden club tribunal for my rhodie crime. At the farmhouse garden there are six of them already planted!! Two are purple, two are white, and two are a mystery as yet to unfold with spring.

This one is a total mystery. The actual size of these leaves and buds are under half an inch. I have no idea what it is.

A pretty camellia. Although I doubt I would ever plant a ton of them, we do love camellias and this one has grown on me quite a bit in the time we've been purchasing the house. Something else I'm very excited about is the Viburnum by the porch: a snowball tree!!!!! Ooh, I've been wanting one of those for so long!! What luck to have one already established. There are also two giant hydrangeas in the garden but I think they're the lace cap kind and I like the classic pom-pom kind.

This is the the landing of the staircase. What pretty light comes in.

The front of the house. As seen from the garden. A ubiquitous Japanese maple is in the foreground trying to lay low because it knows I will dig it up. Don't worry, it will find a good home. They are extremely well loved in this town.

The dining room built ins. Lots and lots of kitchen and dining room cabinets and drawers. Closets are a small sickly affair in this house, but there is no shortage of storage space for kitchen and dining things. The furniture is not ours. The sellers staged the house for selling.

A view I will see a thousand times a year or more. How pretty! Kitchen window; like looking out through the soul of the house.

Well, it's time to bath and get packing again. I got a start yesterday but not a very big start. The new house is only about a mile from our current house so I think we will not pack things in a careful meticulous fashion but in a haphazard quick way. Why hasn't someone developed a teleporter for moving yet? Whoever does it will make their fortune.

*He immediately rejected "The Rose And Thorn Sanatorium". What's he got against roses and thorns and thistles anyway? I'd love to call our house "Thornyfield Sanatorium" but I suppose he wouldn't go for that either. I'm rewatching the 1970's Jane Eyre production with Timothy Dalton in it who I normally dislike but who is the only actor I've so far seen who can play that character. I've read the book many times too. I love it. The reason I thought up sanatorium in the first place is that in the old days sanatoriums were not only places where crazy people were stored, it was where people went for rests to prevent them from completely losing their nuts all over the place and killing relatives. I have, since I was a very young teen, fantasized about going to an asylum to rest. Although, real asylums are not restful peaceful pretty places. I mean, if there were any actual asylums left, which there aren't I think. The modern asylum is the city street.

Hey, how about "Thornyfield Asylum"?!!!! A good mix of hard modern with Gothic romance.

Surprises In The Winter Garden

Who is this hitchhiker on my surprise rogue beet that I discovered in the garden yesterday? Is it a baby earthworm or something more dangerous to my garden health? Look how big this little beet is to this fellow. Microcosms are fascinating. I am getting itchy to get out there in my garden and do stuff. There's still so much I need to get done inside to help my house run more smoothly. I have tons of stuff to go through and get rid of, space to make. I have shelves to organize.

Speaking of getting rid of stuff, no one has an answer for me on this one, but I keep avoiding getting rid of stuff because I always feel obligated to try and make a little money by having a garage sale or list things on e-bay but whenever I have done things like this I am the one person who does not make three hundred dollars. I make nothing because I am THMR*. So, do I finally embrace this fact and give my things away in charitable fashion? Or do I bang my head against a fine hard brick wall until I bleed out some sense? And then I still have all my store stock. I have had sales and not sold it, I have tried selling it on my web store, and lastly I tried selling it at seriously reduced prices at the holiday market and sold none of it. There are some things that are useful that I will keep: a lifetime supply of Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products, dishtowels, and body soap. But what to do with the books? The kid's tees? The hats?

What I was thinking of doing is seeing how much of the stuff I have would be useful to the women's shelter here. Some of the body products might be a welcome bit of luxury to battered women and their children. Same with the tee shirts. I don't know. Most of what I carried was for people nesting, not people fleeing serious problems. Is it an insult to give battered women pretty sun hats?

Anyway... I have to figure this out because I feel the weight of all this stuff pressing in on me. It needs to be dealt with. I need to get rid of my storage space. I need to make more room in my house. Clean out time!

What ultimately feels right is to donate everything I don't want. Yes, I could use some extra money. But somehow it never does work that way for me. So it feels more natural and gentle to accept the messages from the great beyond: "Hey Dufus! Don't try to make any money!"

I'm still fighting quite a lot of inertia so a lot of this talk about getting stuff done is kind of academic anyway.

Back to the garden...yesterday I bought ten gorgeous asparagus crowns. I have bought a lot of asparagus crowns in my gardening life with very little success (mostly trying to plant them where they don't thrive-like in solid clay soil) so I know what to expect: shriveled up alien looking bundles of dry root matter that you usually have to soak before planting. The ones I got at the farm store yesterday were plump and HUGE and healthy and did I say HUMONGOUS already? I only bought ten of them because I needed to read up on the other variety they carry to figure out if I really want it.

So today I will be planting asparagus in two of my eight raised beds. If anyone in my area is reading this who is planning on planting asparagus? Get it from Wilco, but do it soon because I hear they sell out fast. They are $1.49 per crown which is not as cheap as you can get them some places, but I think they are very much worth it.

It's also time to plant favas and peas. I haven't figured out where I'm going to plant them. I think in the raised beds is the best plan. I could do that today. If I could muster up the energy. Here's what I accomplished yesterday: washed (but did not fold) one load of laundry, made pita pizzas. That's it. OK, I also did some dishes. So do you think I can get more done today?

About the pickled eggplant...I ate some. I'm not dead yet. Ha ha. It wasn't as good as I hoped. It had a nice tanginess to it but the only flavoring that was added to it were coriander seeds which have no flavor unless you chew on them. I have a thing about chewing on whole spice seeds: I don't do it. On it's own eggplant is somewhat bland. Also, the eggplants I used had already developed lots of seeds and the seedy centers aren't particularly pleasant to eat. So I may not eat all of those eggplants but I did spy some very promising looking recipes in my new book for pickled eggplant and I intend to try some recipes with different seasonings.

Uh oh, it appears to be raining. Not good to work soil when raining. Perhaps today is the day to make my second duvet?

Time and coffee will tell.


*C'mon, you know what this is by now, right?

The Carpet Is Up, The Gloves Are Off

Have you ever tried to convince a chicken to sit still? Have you ever tried to bribe one with food? Have you ever tried to convince one that being a cover-hen is a prestigious line of work? They are a lot less gullible than you would imagine. Not only that? They are totally flighty! Pearl (pictured above) will never win a Nobel prize for being an ill-socialized genius, yet I can't help but admire her natural reticence concerning interactions with humans and her total feminist-like disinterest in modeling. For all that, she did well. Angela and I must have taken about fifty shots of her and it took some real animal-trainer savvy on my part.

Several times I had to soothe her with reminders that I do not eat the flesh of animals nor do I eat my family pets. I think she believed me.

There is a very specific person out there in the world (most likely still in California) who HATES the sounds chickens make. It's kind of sad that this person, who was ultimately evil*, continues to live in my head after making me get rid of my first beloved flock of hens over two years ago. I think about her every time I listen to my girls cooing, clucking, and squawking, sounds that I find deeply therapeutic. (Even the loud squawking they do while laying.) This person had two vacations ruined by the noise that chickens make. I mean, how is that even possible?

I wonder if there will be a time when her name and her chicken hate will stop ringing in my ears? You know what gives me joy, though? The knowledge that if she moved next door to me now, she could not make me get rid of my girls. And if she complained too much? I could legally get seven more of them!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!

The carpet came up and what was revealed underneath was a gorgeous wood floor in great condition. There are three or four deep divots in it that will need filling and fixing, but the rest of it is just perfect! Angela, who weirdly seems to know everything, says that my floors have a wax finish on them (because if I drop water on them they will temporarily discolor) which means I can buff them to make them shine again. I don't think my knee will allow me to do this by hand on all fours. Did I not tell you about my injury?

Let's just put it this way: after a number of years reprogramming myself to stop referring to myself as a klutzomaniac, it appears I used to call myself that for good reason. I have a talent for falling and scraping my knees, breaking my hips, and destroying what little strength I have left in my joints. Not to mention the constant deterioration of my dignity. Last week I fell down and scraped off all seven layers of skin on my right knee. It has a very painful scab on it right now.

So I must go on a search for a good tool for buffing my floors that won't cost a small fortune. Look at that wood! You know, I am beginning to like my house. We ended up choosing a Martha Stewart color for the walls called "Fern Shoot". It's very similar to the brighter green paint chip shown in the last post. Philip has done the detail work and I'm so excited for the room to be done already. It's so much prettier than it was before.

A lesson that almost everyone who buys a house learns is to not wait to make small changes that will increase your happiness and house satisfaction. What happens to so many of us is that we get busy and stressed so we go ahead and fill our brand new living room with our huge load of crap and then months go by and we realize that we still don't have time to paint the walls so we may as well hang pictures up. The job just gets more and more insurmountable. Then you do these things right before you have to sell it and you kick yourself because your house is suddenly the house you always wished it was and now you're preparing to hand it over to someone else. Someone else who is probably going to paint all your pretty walls stark white again right after you hand them the keys.

In spite of learning this lesson repeatedly, I continue to make the same choices, the same mistakes. Time is not actually on my side. I should have done these things right away. Do you know how much dust came clouding up out of that carpet as I yanked it up? Dust my vacuum couldn't suck up, apparently. (And I have a great vacuum.) Dust we've been breathing. Is this why Philip's asthma has gotten worse? Carpets really are filth traps. Yes, I know, I know I always start sounding like Howard Hughes when I talk about wall to wall carpeting. Area rugs can be rolled up and sent to the deep cleaners. Wall to wall sits on it's padding for fifteen years hanging onto every stain, every disgusting particle of cat vomit that reaches the inner sanctum. You can pour as much enzyme solution as you want on your carpet, it just sinks in like the dog pee did. True, it may not smell anymore, but I know it never truly goes away. Dogs can still smell it.

Grossed out now? On top of the filth factor, it strikes me as really awful that now I have to throw this ENORMOUS roll of synthetic disgusting mess in the land fill. I know that synthetics have revolutionized our lives, but maybe it would have been better if all wall to wall had continued to be made out of wool. I didn't choose to install the carpet in the first place, so I shouldn't feel guilty, but I do.

The lesson? Make time to paint the walls. Make time to rip up the carpet. Cause lord knows no one is going to make time for you to do these things. Also? Maybe wall to wall is a health hazard. Can you imagine what would happen if oil supplies really did just suddenly dry up and none of us had solar panels installed against this bleak possibility and we couldn't run our vacuums? People with area rugs would simply take them outside and beat the crap out of them to remove the dust and other debris, but for those with wall to wall? Oh my god. The thought boggles the mind and impresses the fear glands.



*Alright, she's not evil. There are people I adore who don't like chickens. But none of them would have tried to use their newlywed status as a reason why chicken noise is intolerable (it's not "romantic" don't you know). Oh yes, let me get rid of my beloved family pets who make noise for twenty minutes between 1 and 2 pm because that's when you crazy newlyweds would like to have sex and it just isn't working with the noise of those damn chickens which makes things go limp. Jesus.