St. Matthias

My life lately has been all about gardening.  First there is my little back steps vegetable garden that’s looking more and more prosperous.  That’s peas and radishes in the foreground, garlic and green onions in the middle, and behind that my little patch of cut & come again mixed lettuce.

And then there is my rose garden.  It makes me smile just to type that sentence.  It’s not as finished as I would like.  For one thing, the edging is kinda ragged, and I didn’t get around to digging up the area next to the fence (to the left of this photo).  So there’s much more work that will need to be done.  But I have a rose garden, and that makes me happy.

And then yesterday evening I helped put together this little thing.  This happens to be a first, trial Hugelkulture bed at the Mission of Mary farm.  When I was over there last week I was talking with the volunteer coordinator, and mentioned that I thought Hugekulture was awfully cool.  He said he’d been talking to one of the other cofounders the other day about that, and the upshot was, on Monday we got most of the way through building a Hugelkulture bed.  We started with digging out all the grass that was underneath where the wood now is.  I didn’t get a picture of that, being pretty busy digging, but that big pile of grass and dirt in the background is mostly stuff that I dug up.

Then we started placing logs.  I wasn’t all that much help with the heavy lifting, so I’ve got lots of pictures of that.  The huge log that the two guys in blue are moving became the heart of the bed.  I wanted to name it Odin All-Father, but we thought that might be a little pagan for a farm that is, after all, dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  I don’t have nicknames for these guys yet, but the guy in the pale blue shirt is one of the cofounders of the farm.  He and I took a poetry class at UD together.  He still remembers the kick-ass sonnet we cowrote.  The guy in the orange shirt is the volunteer coordinator.  The guy in dark blue is their summer intern, who will probably end up with a nickname something like Intern Bob, if I ever get around to giving him one.

We piled up a lot of wood.  The next step would be to put all that sod we dug out back on top of the wood (this time with grass side down), and then top it off with a layer of compost.  However, we ran out of time.  I was getting worn out, and the person who had been cooking the community dinner was banging on the dinner bell more and more insistently.  So we had to leave it at this stage.  The sad thing is that, since I’ll be out of town next week for Mariah’s graduation, I probably won’t get to help complete the bed.  But that’s ok.  I got it started.

The backs of my legs would be very happy if I don’t pick up a shovel again for a long, long time.

St. Dominic de la Calzada

I spent three hours out in the garden this afternoon, and my arms feel like rubber.   I don’t know what my legs feel like, but I know I’m not looking forward to walking tomorrow.  Even the muscles in my butt hurt.  This is because Friday afternoon my landlord came and pulled those bush stumps out with his truck and a lot of chains.  It was rather wonderful.  I came home from work, and they were just gone, like magic.  I was so delighted I could have kissed him.  Except I probably wouldn’t.  It’s the mustache.  And the wife.  And that he’s old enough to be my father.  Plus there’s the total lack of any actual desire to kiss him.  But still.

This whole bush-removal thing ended up turning into quite the saga.  As you may recall, Atlas had made a small attempt at digging out the stumps last Sunday, but realized that he didn’t have the right tools for the job (just a spade wasn’t going to cut it), and that, since he had come straight from his Army National Guard training weekend, he was too exhausted to really try.  On Wednesday he came back again, this time armed with something that looked like a trowel, except sword size, and a crowbar sort of thing as tall as he was, all iron, with a weighted knob at one end, and a blade at the other.  He also brought with him one of his Army buddies, a young man even more fit than Atlas (who coaches wrestling for one of the local high schools), with arms that would make Pippi swoon.  Between the two of them, they were sure that they could whip this thing out of the ground, no problem.

And, well, they tried.  They dug, and cut, and levered, and made the ground shake with their blows.  The stump sat there smugly and did not budge. It mocked them.  Once they got enough dirt away, they discovered that what looked like four smaller stumps above ground merged into one huge stump about the diameter of a salad plate below ground.  And that was the smaller of the two bushes.  Still they worked on it, until eventually they had to admit defeat, the stump still essentially intact.  Atlas’s friend suggested that perhaps I should look into renting a stump grinder.  I thought despairingly of the cost of renting large equipment, and said I would think about it.

After about a day weighing my options, I called my landlord, and mentioned that I really, really would like those stumps gone.  He said cheerfully that he’d take care of it right away, that since it had been raining all day it should be no problem.  And when I came home form work, they were gone.  Just like that.

Today I went out after I got home from our Mothers Day brunch (love you, Mom!), and started work.  I dug out huge holes where I wanted my roses to be, unearthing enough stones for an edging, and some really huge roots in the process, dug in some peat moss, and planted my roses.  The pink climbing rose is at the outside corner where I will train it up the house, and the white bush is in the inside corner.  I planted snapdragons between them, and scattered three packets of mixed flowers.  At one point in there I got totally distracted, and also pruned the nearby lilac bush.  I thought about digging out the beginning of what I hope will be my berry bed so that I can plant the strawberry plants I got last Friday, but by that point I was starting to get clumsy from fatigue, and I knew I needed to go in.  So I just watered my plants well, put everything away, and went in.

I think I will sleep very well tonight.

Bl. Rose of Viterbo

So a little bit ago I had this conversation with a coworker that started with her misreading an email headed Data Ark Maintenance as Dark Arts Maintenance, leading into speculation about Harry Potter, and what always happens to the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and what Dark Arts Maintenance would be like, including possible spare Dementors stashed in the odd closet (could explain a lot about a particular empty floor at one of my hospitals), and then ended up with a fervent wish for a House Elf to do the filing when we weren’t here, and me promising that if we did get one I wouldn’t knit him or her socks (don’t tell Hermione).  All of which was pretty awesome, so I thought I’d share.

Also on the sharing front, this weekend I got to babysit both Sweet Pea and Fleur, the first time I’ve gotten both nieces all to myself at the same time.  It was pretty great.  Fleur and I did a craft project together, Sweet Pea and I had long conversations about deep subjects (she’s becoming more and more vocal), and I did my best to teach her to say Crivens (mostly because I think it would be hysterical to have a small person running around saying Crivens! all the time).

Sweet Pea and I also discovered that she is mesmerized by me playing the game Bejeweled on my phone.  This came in pretty handy later on in the night.  Sweet Pea was getting very tired, but I was trying to keep her up because I knew Sae would want to nurse her when she came home.  Things were going pretty well until Sweet Pea bonked her head against the box of wet wipes on the changing area, and promptly went into full melt-down mode.  Fleur and I finally got her settled down with a combination of rocking and having her watch us play Bejeweled together.  After a little while, we moved onto the couch, where Fleur and I racked up an all-time high score, and Sweet Pea crashed hard.

So of course I took a picture.  After a while my cell phone battery started to give out, so Fleur and I switched to books.  Fleur asked me to get out the stash of her old little kids books from the cupboard.  “I don’t read them anymore,” she said, “but I still like to listen to them.”  So I read them to her in a whisper while Sweet Pea dreamed.  It was an incredibly sweet time.

In other news, it looks like I’m getting closer to having a rose garden.  Atlas came over Sunday to work on getting those bushes pulled out for me.  I had tried to tell him that it would be a big job, but I think he didn’t really believe me.  The bushes are still mostly there.  He’s coming back today with a crowbar.  Sarge thinks he should just break down and borrow Sarge’s truck to pull them out, but it’s Atlas’s job, so I’m letting him make the call.

Yesterday I went to help out at Mission of Mary Farm.  This is an urban farm run by a guy I took a poetry class with back when I was at UD.  For a while now I’ve been thinking about urban farming, and building a community garden.  There’s this huge empty lot between my house and my parents’ that has been calling to me more and more.  But it would be a huge job, and a massive commitment, not to mention expensive, so I’ve been mostly just angsting about it a lot.  (Well, and praying too.)  Anyway, at some point it occurred to me that I know this guy who’s doing something awfully similar, and maybe it would be a good idea to go learn some things.  So I emailed my friend, who connected me with the volunteer coordinator, and the upshot was that yesterday I found myself in the backyard of an abandoned house in East Dayton raking well-aged compost into raised beds.

And honestly, I can’t wait to go back.  I remember going to a birthday bonfire for That Guy on the plot of land that is now their primary garden.  It’s now covered with tidy beds of garlic and tomatoes and lettuces and lord knows what else.  I’m totally jealous of their hoop house, not to mention the cold frames, and the asparagus bed.  Plus, I may have found people who get just as excited about Hugelkulture as I do (we’re thinking of making a hugelkulture perimeter around the new lot they just acquired).  Friends, this could be so much fun!

I was also laughing to myself while I was raking the beds, thinking of my own beds that need to be built.  I went to Lowe’s on Friday swearing that I was only going to buy peat moss, and maybe a packet of turnip seeds, and left with four tomato plants, two strawberry plants, two six-cell packs of snapdragons, plus beet and turnip seeds, and the peat moss.  At least I put back the blackberry plant.  But, you know, now all of that needs places to go.  It reminded me of the verse from Song of Songs about don’t look at me because I’m brown, my brothers made me tend their garden, my own garden I have not tended.

Yes, I know.  I’m special.

Sts. Timothy & Maura

I don’t know if I mentioned this before or not, but MDoS and The Beautiful T have been expecting their second child for a little while now.  Their due date was actually on my birthday, which I thought was pretty cool.  When I was over at their house last Saturday for MDoS’s birthday get-together, T mentioned that, while she was totally ready for this baby to get here, her house was not.  So I volunteered to come over and help out.  After Tuesday didn’t work out, we decided that I would go over yesterday.  But my stomach has been hinky all week, and yesterday afternoon it tipped over from sorta hinky to really kinda not good, so I emailed T and said that I hated to do this, but I didn’t think I’d be able to come after all.  Which, in the end, turned out to probably be a pretty good thing.

This morning I was here at work, working away, when I got a call from MDoS.  He asked which work location I was currently at, and when I told him, said that I should come up to a particular patient room on the Maternity floor.  At which point my eyes got really big, and I got goosebumps all up and down my arms.  Immediately I jumped up, put up my “I’m running an errand, just hang out, I’ll be right back” sign, and went as fast as decorously possible up to that particular room.  And there I found MDoS, The Beautiful T, and their utterly beautiful new little daughter.

It turns out that T had been having contractions on and off all day yesterday.  They weren’t steady or regular, so she didn’t think much of it.  Plus, she had some errands she wanted to run.  Later in the afternoon, the contractions started getting stronger, so she called her mom to come pick up Littlefoot (who’s two now).  When MDoS got home from work, they called the hospital to see if they should come in.  The hospital said that they would call T’s midwife, and call them back.  Meanwhile, T’s contractions started getting a bit more intense, so she moved into her bedroom.  After a while, MDoS was able to speak with the midwife, who said that yeah, they should come into the hospital.

However, when MDoS came in to tell T that it was time to get in the car, T had already transitioned into the heavy labor, and refused to move.  So MDoS called the hospital back to ask what he should do.  They said to call 911.  So he did, and while he was on the phone giving them the details, T delivered their child.  She told MDoS, “The baby’s here!”  He thought she meant that the child was really, really about to arrive, not that the child was taking her first breaths between her mother’s feet.  Just a moment later, the EMTs arrived, and whisked mother and baby and father and everything off to the nearest hospital, which happened to be, not the one that they had been planning to deliver at, but the one where I work.  Which I think is pretty cool.

Also, The Beautiful T is pretty much a BA.

So this morning I got to pay a surprise visit to the new family (a surprise for me, not them), and then I headed up again on my lunch break.  This time I got to hold the baby.

 

She’s fairly cranky about this whole being born thing, but fairly adorable in the way tiny, extremely fresh babies are.  And The Beautiful T is, as always, ridiculously beautiful, especially given that she had an unplanned home birth less than twenty-four hours ago.

Seriously, I’m in awe.

St. Joseph the Worker

Today is my birthday, and my coworkers are awesome.  As evidence thereof, I humbly submit the following note, which was attached to a bag containing four cans of artichoke hearts, one of my favorite foods:

The note says:

Okie-dokie, Artichokie!  In keeping with our celebratory food humor, we bestow upon you this artichoke.  This humble vegetable not only embodies qualities that we admire and appreciate in you, but it’s also a vegetable that will party hardy with you on your birthday.  Intrigued?  We hope so.  Please read on.

While many people’s favorite part of the artichoke is its heart, it is the leaves that contain many of the artichoke’s health benefits.  So not only does it have a good heart, but it has layers that add depth and interest.  This is not unlike our good-hearted, light saber wielding, Force using, swing dancing HR Support Partner who knits better than your grandma and can out-philosophize you any day of the week.  Bernadette, you are an artichoke.

And what vegetable will party hard with you and still be there for you the next morning?  You got it.  the artichoke, nature’s hangover remedy.  So cut loose, celebrate and enjoy the day!

And, gosh.  I’m all verklepmt.  Because you know why they were giving me artichokes for my birthday instead of, say, cake, or chocolate?  Because they know me well enough to not only give me compliments like that, and to know that I utterly love artichokes, but to know that I can’t eat sugar.  And that’s pretty darn thoughtful.  I am very blessed.

Happy birthday!  Even if it isn’t your birthday today, I hope you have a wonderful day!

 

St. Pius X

This is one of those better late than never kinds of posts.  Months ago I made a doll for my niece Honey.  I took lots of pictures to share with you guys, and then I lost the phone and the chip inside with the pictures on it before I could share them.  (I’m beginning to see a theme in my life.)  A while later I found the phone again, and while the phone had not survived, the chip inside was just fine.  So now I can show you what I made:

I made this doll using the pattern and tutorial Mimi Kirchner did for Purl Bee.  It was an excellent tutorial, and the doll turned out amazing.  I took these pictures just after I had attached the legs to the doll’s body, and was totally blown away by the fact that the doll was sitting up all on her own.  While the pattern calls for 100% wool felt, and other lovely things, I don’t have easy access to wool felt in lots of different colors.  Also, wool felt is expensive, and since the doll was destined for a small, active child, I wanted to make something that would be relatively easy to clean.  So I went ahead and used the poly craft felt that they sell in every craft store in America.  I think it turned out pretty well.

This is the doll after I dressed her.  It was a Christmas doll, so I chose those colors for her dress.  I figured the white arms and legs might look like an undershirt and tights.  The white part of the belt is actually a satin ribbon, and I embroidered it on using a doubled chain stitch.

I rally like how I attached the flowers on the skirt.  The pattern calls for another smaller felt circle to be the center, but I didn’t bother with it.  I think the stitching makes the flower look a little like a morning glory.  Also, instead of using contrasting felt trim on the skirt hem, I just sewed on a bit of lace trim I had on hand.

I still just love how the doll sits up on her own!  Also, while we’re talking about handmade things, in the background are the pintucked curtains I made for our dining room windows.

As it turns out, Honey loves her doll.  Apparently she takes it with her everywhere.  This makes me so happy.  It is a little challenging to show people that you love them from thousands of miles away, especially when you really don’t like using Skype (I’m weird that way).  But I wanted Honey to know that I do treasure her, even if I may not see her much.  And also, every little girl deserves to have a special doll.  It turns out that she loves it so much that Indy has been using it as part of their regular art lessons (Indy is much more comfortable with Skype than I am).  So now both Honey and Indy have made the doll another dress, and there are more doll things on the way.

I also wanted her mother, Sunny, to know that I’m thinking of her, so I embroidered her some dish towels.

Sky blue/turquoise is her favorite color, so I did a two with simple graphics, and one with a quote:

The pictures aren’t great – I was in a tearing hurry to get my things packed up to go in Mariah’s Christmas box – but they’ll do.

And then, almost a year ago I knit a pair of socks for Mr. T.

I had knit Sae’s wedding veil as my wedding present to the two of them, but that struck me as a rather one sided present.  So I decided I wanted to knit Mr. T something too.  We discussed options a little, and decided on a pair of socks.  I figured white was wedding-like, and I chose the cable pattern because it is romantic (see all the hearts?), and yet manly.  I took one  of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken while I was working on the socks, but then I neglected to get a picture of the finished product.  Mr. T happened to be wearing them on our Family Gift Giving Day, and I got a couple of pictures.

I think they turned out pretty well too. 

In other sock news, I’ve finished my Fantine socks.  I bound off the last stitch at my family Birthday Brunch on Sunday.  My friends, these are the most ridiculous socks.  I was determined to use every last inch of my yarn, which is how they ended up being knee socks.  And then I ended up knitting my initials into the calf gusset.  And there’s going to be a ribbon tie at the top.  And they’re just awesome.  I still need to weave in the yarn ends, and I’m going to have to get someone else to take the pictures (it’s pretty hard to take pictures of your own feet), but then I’ll have even more knitting goodness to show you.  And the way the weather’s been, I might even still wear them before next Fall!

St. Zita

I still haven’t found my old phone.  However, a new phone arrived Monday, and so now I’m in touch with the outside world again.  It’s a type of phone I’ve never had before, and since it was refurbished, it came without a users manual, so it’s taken me a while to get used to it.  It took me a few days to figure out how to insert an SD card.  But I finally figured it out, and now if I could get the Google marketplace app to recognize that yes, I really do have a google account (so I can reinstall some of the apps I had found so handy before), we’d be all good to go.  Even without that, we’re doing pretty well.  And maybe one day the other phone will turn up, and I can finally solve the mystery of what the heck happened.

Meanwhile, I was thinking that not much had happened this week, and then I went back over it, and realized that was not actually true.  On Monday I had my last night of teaching for the Swing Club, which was bittersweet but good.  I gave Curly the set of computer speakers I’ve been lugging around for years.  They originally belonged to the WSU Swing Club, and I kept them in my trunk because I was the main dj.  And then the club changed venues to one that had a built in speaker system, so they just stayed in my trunk.  Since then the club has dissolved and reformed I think three times.  Each time I’ve offered to give them back, but whoever was in the club wasn’t interested.  It’s handy for UD to have separate speakers for the Swing I and Swing II classes, so they’ll put them to good use.

I have to admit that it was very weird leaving the building with my swing bag so much lighter than it had been when I went in.  However, I think the full reality of it won’t hit until next Fall, when it’s time for Swing Club to start up again, and I won’t be part of it.  But let’s not borrow trouble from tomorrow.

I’ve also been working on my garden, not so much in the actual sense, but in the theoretical, planning sense.  I saw my landlord the other day, and asked him if it was ok to pull out those stupid bush stumps that are left at the end of my sunroom, and plant roses there.  He said that he thought that was a great idea, and said that if we got a good hard rain sometime soon, he’d bring his truck over and pull them out himself.  He also ok’d the idea of planting a line of berry bushes along the sunny side of the fence.  Though that might not happen this year.  (Berry bushes are expensive, yo.)

I’m very glad my landlord gave the go ahead, since I had already ordered my climbing rose – a Viking Queen from Heirloom Roses.  And then, because my landlord may or may not remember that he actually made such a promise, I also asked Atlas if he would come dig the stumps out for me.  He said yes, and we eventually decided that he would come over Monday and do it.  Which is pretty awesome, I have to say, and now I have to figure out what I’m going to feed him to thank him for being so very awesome.

Also, on Wednesday was Administrative Professional’s Day, and since I technically am an Administrative Professional (and for heaven’s sake, can’t we just say Secretary?), the ladies that I work with got together to decorate my desk and things.  Usually when we have occasions like this at the office, we get together and buy the lady in question chocolate, or her favorite kind of sweet treat, and have a cake.  Except I don’t eat sugar, so that doesn’t really work for me.  However, I am rather fond of cheese, so they went to the gourmet grocery store and bought me some nice cheese, and packaged it up with a bunch of cheesy puns (I camembert it!), and presented that to me instead.  I have to say, it was one of the most thoughtful office presents I’ve ever received!

Now we’re into the weekend.  Last night I had absolutely nothing to do, which was wonderful.  Today, however, is going to make up for it.  This afternoon I have a birthday thing for one of my friends, followed by heading over to the Family Homestead to set chicken to marinate, and then the Swing Club Spring Swing Dance.  Tomorrow is my family birthday brunch, so I’ll have Mass followed by frying up lots of Buttermilk Fried Chicken, and then family time.

And I’ll tell you all about that later.