Spring comes to Durham Street...

...in small doses.

The one good thing to come out of the time change was a whole half hour of light after I got home from work yesterday. That could only mean one thing: time to get back into the garden!

At the Flower Show last week, I bought two plants: a bright yellow rannuncula, destined for the front yard, and a magenta paeony for the back. I love both kinds of plants, and attempted to plant both last year with neither appearing. But I will not be deterred!

I started my gardening time with a tour around the grounds. I discovered:

A lovely clump of crocuses in back that I did not plant last fall. Where did they come from???



One lone snowdrop in front. Will there be more to follow???



I also found assorted other green shoots that I hope will grow into some of the 50 bulbs I planted last year, early leaves on the lilacs and hyacinths, a rose bush in desperate need of pruning, and some leafy action on the cheap daisies I bought from Produce Junction and then stuck in the ground, just in case.

And....

...just where I planted one of the failed paeonies from last year....

...some red shoots sticking up from the ground!!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned for news and more photos taken with a real camera in actual daylight!

Deaccessioning...

Maybe it's something to do with my longing for spring that's brought about this urge to clean house. Not scrubbing, mind you. Though I do that from time to time, I never have the longing to...

In my never ending process of de-cluttering and actually putting things away from the places where I've dropped them, I will suddenly come across an object I no longer want or need. Without hesitating (lest I have second thoughts) I try and put the items in one particular place - my outbox, to borrow a term from Apartment Therapy. They sit there until the next chance I have for a thrift store run. And almost always, once they are in the outbox, I really never think of them again.

This weekend, I had a chance to get several bags of stuff out of my house, including:

-clothes I was given but couldn't use
-clothes I never wore
-VCR tapes I replaced with DVDs
-some CDs I listened to and hated
-4-5 random mugs
-some fuzzy critters from my distant youth or not so distant past (it's tough, but slowly I am able to let go of ~5 per year)
-rubber stamps (gasp! But not that many - maybe 10 - I will hardly notice...)
-plastic bags taken to recycling in the grocery store (I know, how could I. But not to worry, I still have more than enough.)

And, of course, I had no sooner returned home when I found, in my kitchen cabinets, the next pile of things to get rid of. Thus the cycle starts again...

Twenty years of valentines...

I realized this year that I had been making valentines for some time now. My earliest efforts as an adult were cut-up sections of wrapping paper, always with a valentine-esque quote on the inside (I remember that my first quote was part of the very brief love scene at the end of Henry V, indicative of my complete crush on Kenneth Brannagh. Swoon!).



Once rubber stamping came into my life after my senior year in college, there was no going back. I realized this year that the interior quotes moved first to the outside of the cards, and then disappeared entirely.



Part of that was a time crunch - if it wasn't part of the process of making the card itself, it wasn't going in. It was too labour-intensive to do all of that writing!



But I missed the words, which are faithfully part of so many of my creations, even if you can't read them. This year's offering returns the quote to the interior:



"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love." -Sophocles

Happy Valentine's Day!

Work weekend...

Next weekend I have the great fortune of having friends come up to help me with some of those house projects that I never quite get to on my own. My list of things, is of course, endless, but I need to focus on small things that are do-able in a weekend time frame (i.e., not painting the kitchen cabinets), not too expensive (i.e., not blowing in insulation), in our skill-set (i.e., not fixing the heat), and slightly glamorous/satisfying (i.e., not cleaning the refrigerator).

Here are some of my ideas:

-put window film on the living room windows
-tea-dye, sew and hang living room curtains
-hang pictures in the dining room
-re-line the kitchen drawers with non-skid stuff
-fix the sofa hems so they don't show beneath the slipcovers

Other more-remote possibilities

-inventory the corner cabinet in the dining room
-start stripping paint off of the corner cabiner (a project you can start and stop)

Oh you who have been in my house (all 2-3 readers who have not given up on this blog), what should I add to the lists??

The weekend in review or How’d I do?

The list:

-Buy a pumpkin
-Sleep in
-Turn on the heat in the house/bleed the radiators
-Wash a lot of things - clothes, kitchen towels, dishes (do other things need to be washed, of course, but let’s not be excessive here...)
-Put the downstairs furniture back to its pre-party configuration
-Finish edging the garden beds
-Weed, mow, plant bulbs, general garden clean-up
-Straighten my tree (thanks, Bob!!)
-Make at least one thank-you card
-Scottish dance
-Watch the Mad Men DVDs before they are overdue at the library
-Attend the Piffaro concert
-Restore my office to some semblance of sanity

Well, the list doesn’t look as bad as it could...

On Friday I washed dishes and did laundry between Mad Men episodes.

Saturday was garden day. I bought Seymour, my pumpkin and a few too many bulbs first thing, and proceeded to spend about 4 hours outside between mowing and bricks and tree and weeding. I had this moment of horror when I thought I’d incorrectly estimated the number of bricks I’d need to complete my edging project, but math won the day, and I had exactly the right number. I know you’ll find this shocking, but I got a trifle carried away with the bulbs. I started out really only wanting snowdrops but got drawn in by the prospect of dark purple tulips and hyacinths, miniature daffodils and cream-colored crocuses with a hint of red. If even half of them come up, I’ll be happy, but my expectations are not that high. And I’m happy to report that my lovely tree in front is now upright like the others on the block. My neighbor brought his own power tools and helped me anchor the tree to the base of the front porch. Hopefully in a couple of years the tree will stand straight without the wire support.

I did move my furniture back on Saturday, and go to the dance on Saturday night (I wasn’t yet sore from the yard work. That didn’t kick in until Sunday afternoon). Sunday was perfect. I slept in a bit, had a lazy breakfast, washed more dishes, took a walk to a little local flea market, and finally went downtown for the Piffaro concert, which was fabulous. I can still hear the ringing of the final notes of the choir just hanging in the air.

What didn’t get done...

-Heat and radiators - the temperature soared back up to the 70s, but I think it was the last gasp. I’m slotting in Tuesday as radiator day...
-Crafts - I spent more time getting my hands dirty with dirt, so there was less time available to get my hands dirty with ink. But I must make time!
-Office - well that was a bit farfetched, right? But it does still need to be done. In a big way. Maybe the next weekend that I’m home...

And as for this weekend...

...No ambitions - I’m out of town.

Today's fun topic - ordering a new cell phone...

So, apparently my cell phone has reached that magic age when some of the buttons stop functioning. I've been here before. And luckily, as my cell phone needs are limited (Not giving in to the now ubiquitous need for a fancy phone with email and apps. Nope. Okay, almost. But, no...), I’ve developed a technique for dealing with it.

1. Look on the AT&T website to see which phones are free or cheap with a contract extension

2. Go to the AT&T store and ask a staff member which of the free phones is the best

3. Get the new phone. Get the staff to transfer my address book. Leave happy.

4. Eventually learn how to use the new phone

My goal was to take care of this Monday after work. I trot on over to the store. They point me to the cheap phones in the dark corner where they assume no one will want to shop. I consult with a staff member and learn that they no longer carry the inexpensive/free phones in the store. You can only order them online (no doubt to try and force you to buy something snazzy for instant gratification). But I have the internet, so I have my 5 second consultation and run to catch my train.

Today, I went back to the website to buy my phone. Both of the recommended phones in my category have terrible reviews from users on the website, mostly about scratches and covers falling off, and battery life. But I figure, I am mostly only using this thing as a phone. I am not trying to make it be something it’s not, though doubtless I will drop it several times. So I read a few more reviews, and make my choice. And boy, oh boy, the phone I want comes in RED. Why not? Let’s branch out a little from the basic black (oh, excuse me, graphite...). I make my choice. I start the check-out process... ...only to learn that the red phone requires you to fork over $50 at the check-out and send away for your rebate, while the black phone is just plain free from the start. This seems akin to the myth that red cars are more expensive to insure than others, but this one appears to be true! They are counting on people (like me) not bothering/forgetting to send for the rebate. Such a racket!

So I picked black. It will match all of my shoes.

Seize the Weekend!

I would be lying if I said the craziness of October kind of crept up on me. I knew it was happening. I keep a calendar. I said yes to all of those calling dates AND planned my party for one of those at home weekends. So here I am, about to embark on my one free October weekend, and I’m caught between desires: sleep, be lazy, watch Mad Men DVDs, or, be productive, garden, do laundry, generally de-clutter the house, attack the craziness that is my office. I know! Don’t choose, do both!

Proposed important things for the weekend:

-Buy a pumpkin
-Sleep in
-Turn on the heat in the house/bleed the radiators
-Wash a lot of things - clothes, kitchen towels, dishes (do other things need to be washed, of course, but let’s not be excessive here...)
-Put the downstairs furniture back to its pre-party configuration
-Finish edging the garden beds
-Weed, mow, plant bulbs, general garden clean-up
-Straighten my tree (thanks, Bob!!)
-Make at least one thank-you card
-Scottish dance
-Watch the Mad Men DVDs before they are overdue at the library
-Attend the Piffaro concert
-Restore my office to some semblance of sanity

Will I get to everything on this list? Doubtful. Check back next week for the progress report...