Oho, you clever Brits! (& garden adventures)

(Pre-P.S. - Did you see my big news?)

Intrigued by the title of this article ("Why Dying Is Forbidden in the Arctic") by Duncan Bartlett, I went ahead and read it. It's a cute little profile of a small town in Norway--discussing everything from the answer to the titular question to the ever-present threat of polar bears.

And even though it's a spoiler, I have to quote it, because it cracked me up:

If you are unarmed when you encounter a bear, toss your mittens on the snow in the hope of distracting it.

But if you see it snap its teeth with a smacking sound, it is readying for a kill.

At which point, I suppose, you could try reminding the bear that it is forbidden to die in Longyearbyen and hope it shows respect for local law.

Well, it is Day 4 in the Owl Bag Suspense Vigil, and still no sign of the search for the digital camera. The problem is, I think I remember where I left it, but it isn't there, and now I'm too lazy to keep looking. Am I being too honest? The owl bag isn't getting any dirtier or anything, so it should be all good.

The husb and I are trying to eat healthier, and as such, today I'm going to harvest some of my speckled butter lettuce and make little tuna wraps for lunch. This is assuming many things: (1) that the squirrels haven't eaten it, (2) that it tastes reasonably good, (3) that it hasn't withered and died in a heat wave. However, if all of those assumptions are true, it will be a true moment of triumph, since I grew the butter lettuce from seed and it actually seemed to be thriving, last time I checked.

I can be so lax because we ingeniously moved all the potted plants to the stairs, so the sprayover from the automatic sprinklers waters them, and I kind of stay out of it. The plants really do much better without me. It's kind of pitiful. For instance, the first thing I tried to grow was bell peppers, from seed. None of them really took. But my mint seemed to be thriving, which was nice. Until I noticed that the mint wasn't mint--it was a bell pepper seed that sprouted brilliantly behind my back and grew enormous. (Still no peppers, but I have hope.)

See, some of these things really demand photos. Guess I'd better look for the camera. Shoot. (No pun intended!)

Happy Monday!

[Edited update: the squirrels did get to the lettuce. But they didn't destroy it. They just nibbled a corner of every piece, to make sure none of it was poisoned. Which was very kind of them. So I'm going to eat it anyway, and just cut off the nibbled bits.]

The doorknob fell off.

I know that sounds like a metaphor, but it's not. The little tab thing you press down on to open my front door popped off--thankfully after the door was open. I guess you call a locksmith for this kind of thing...? We have a couple of other lock issues that need to be taken care of, so I guess it's time. In the meanwhile, I'll rest comfortably knowing that no one can possibly expect me to leave my house while there's no good way to get back inside.

In other news, the garden is coming along nicely! Although I don't think I heeded Mary Witzl's advice in time to keep from flooding my garlic. I do know that the Peruvian Daffodils are getting close to pushing up over the top of the soil--I saw a hint of green in both pots! It's funny to think that all my life I've walked by people's incredible gardens and not been impressed, but I manage to get two plants to grow and I feel like the queen of all I survey.

One of the most charming things I've seen lately is a smattering of baby praying mantises around the yard. A couple of weeks ago, I followed one as it made its way down the railing of the deck. Head to tail (or whatever), it couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 millimeters. At one point, it stopped walking and turned its tiny head to look at me. Then it set about doing a series of Tai-Chi moves, leaning slowly forward and then backward, all the while watching me. (Maybe it had a crush!)

Lately we've seen one on the dwarf orange tree, over the course of a few days. Slightly bigger. They're just so darn cute. And when they're older, they'll eat all sorts of pesky pests.

The peaches are getting nice and rosy, too ("peach", I believe, is the technical term).

Last weekend, we had our first backyard get-together. It was great fun, although I'm really neurotic about improper "flow" at parties. Clumps of people make me nervous. So I took a few mental notes about what can be placed where to keep people scattered and moving.

So spring has sprung! Although it's cold and damp here--has our misty June gloom come early?

And so it grows...

(or, "Wishful Thinking")

We recently had some landscaping done in our backyard. What was once just ivy is now a terraced little yard, and what was once a deck that belonged to a monstrous 1980s party hot tub is now refinished and furnished with barbecue supplies.

Because of this, and also because of books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore's Dilemma, I have taken a keen interest in trying to grow some plants. Some edible, some not.

I have a history of killing plants. Or, more euphemistically, not keeping them alive. So I decided that maybe growing things from scratch would give me more of a sense of involvement and responsibility. I bought some seeds and planted bell peppers and oregano in a couple of little pots. Two bell pepper seeds sprouted, but the oregon was silent. So one day, when I was bored, I took a few garlic cloves that had sprouted in the kitchen and stuck them in the oregano pot. Naturally, four days later, hundreds of little oreganos sprouted out of the soil.

Last weekend, I transplanted some things and planted some new things, and now we're playing the waiting game.

I was right about being more invested, too. I water those little buggers every day.

Here's a tour of how things look right now.



This is my shade garden, at the side of the house where the hammock (a $15 cloth number, criminally comfortable) is... mostly shady, especially later in summer as the sun goes off behind the trees. This is all new planting. The tall guy at the back will be a fern; so will the terra cotta round pot. The two in the foreground should be begonias. No, will be! Will be begonias. Positive thinking.



This is a place under the overhang of the downstairs balcony where I dropped some of the oregano sprouts. I can't believe that so many of those seeds sprouted at once. Talk about an embarrassment of riches, and poor planning. I stuck this ball of dirt here as an afterthought, hoping it might decide to fill in the awkward area between the ivy and the little curb. That big green thing is new; it's not oregano. I don't know what it is. I am also trying to grow a leather strap, apparently.



These are my sunny plants. In the back are Peruvian Daffodil and asparagus; then some garlic (thriving! go figure), mint, and oregano (assuming they pull through); the rectangle is my bell peppers, although I'm losing hope because they've been that size for weeks now; and in front is another Peruvian Daffodil.

The front daffodil pot is notable because something has dug through it, and I'm not even sure the bulb is still in there. Apparently skunks will root around in pots and eat bulbs. This makes me exceedingly sad, but I don't know how to check without potentially destroying it, so I'm just going to keep watering it and then maybe eventually plant some basil or something.

So that's the excitement in my life. It's amazing how much more fun this stuff is when you're a grown-up than when your parents force you to do it as a child.

I'll provide updates occasionally, and if anything exciting happens. Cross your fingers, and we may have a full-blown leather strap plant before long!

Oh, and the big news, thanks to this post by Jemima Bean is that we have a peach tree! I saw the photo of the flowers and asked her what they were, because we had some. She replied that they were peaches, and sure enough when we looked more closely at the tree, there were fuzzy baby peaches on it! Hundreds of them, actually.

The guy we bought the house from knew there was a peach tree but never remembered it bearing any fruit (probably because it used to be so shady in the yard). But now... peaches! Peaches! Peaches! We pruned the tree ruthlessly, as apparently is the way to maximize peaches, and now we are just waiting... waiting... waiting...