Eat the View: Part 5, “Rise of the Word Garden”

Every morning I get up at 5am and go out to the back yard to water my vegetable plants. Living in the North West means that we actually have day light at that hour, it’s not much but it keeps me from stubbing my toes. My plants all loved the heat wave we had a few weeks ago making them all double in size. I had hoped that would mean tomatoes soon, but then the cool down back to normal temperatures quickly dismissed that idea.

As one might imagine, I check out my plants every morning as I’m giving them their drink of water. I have had about half a dozen or so snow peas to harvest on my snow pea plant every day and my cherry tomato plant has tiny green tomatoes on it. The problem is because our temperatures have gone back to their normal range of the 70’s it is not really warm enough for the tomatoes to finish ripening. So, I wait. Watching and hoping. I know sooner than I believe I will have more tomatoes than I know what to do with, but a part of me feels a little like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka jumping up and down and screaming “I want it now!” I’m still learning that I can’t rush nature.

ShoeDiva came over on Sunday night to have dinner watch the season premiere of True Blood and in the down time between eating and the show starting we sat out in the garden with a bottle of “3 Buck Chuck” and began to talk. Like they say, one thing led to another, and we ended up naming all of the plants in my garden. We stayed with a theme of author names and tried to match them with the plant’s characteristics (did I mention there was a bottle of wine involved?): my two zucchini plants ended up with the names Poe and Wilde, the snow peas are Hemingway, the strawberry plants are Dr. Suess, my Shady Lady tomato plant is Plath, and the basil is Doyle. The list goes on, but I won’t venture to try to remember all of them. Being the intelligent ladies that we are, because we don’t want me to forget all of these fabulous titles we have bestowed upon these plants we wrote the names on popsicle sticks and put them in the soil next to the plant. Now I’ll never forget that my Lemon Verbena plant has been dubbed Lincoln Steffens.

What's the opposite of a "Pity Party"?

I am feeling full of deep thoughts this morning. I think it may have something to do with the big thunderstorm that rolled through yesterday evening. It seems like it hit all of a sudden, and after a torrential downpour, thunder & lightning and perhaps even a little hail, by the time I had finished cooking dinner it was all done.

Hubby's dad (MusicMan) has been doing something daily that I find intriguing. I guess he's been feeling down about the housing market and the balance between work and life so his business coach advised him to get up a little earlier every day and do something he loved before he started going through his routine of getting ready for the day. So MusicMan has started emailing every morning his thoughts on life. He started out with a group of ten or so people and Hubby tells me that MusicMan is now up to 50 on his list. Hubby forwarded the emails to me (MusicMan is titling them "Passion Party", the opposite of "Pity Party") and I read through the first 9 of his emails this morning. WOW. They are really simple observations on life, but you can tell that he's pouring his soul in to them.

I hadn't really thought about it much, but I think that I have my own little "Passion Party" every morning when I water my garden. It was still raining this morning so I didn't water my plants when I let Cleo out... & I kind of was disappointed about that. Like I said, I hadn't realized that watering my plants is kind of like a morning meditation for me - doing something I enjoy before I get my day started. And I do it every morning.

I hope you're doing something for yourself lately.

A "Material Girl" I'm Not

Day one of the month of June and I already feel summer in the air. I feel like we hardly got spring first but that’s just fine with me. I love spring and summer in Portland they’re nothing like what I grew up with in Sacramento – it just feels like there’s so much more life in the heat of summer here.

With the heat of summer comes a change in wardrobe. Everyone sheds their big wool coats, knitted scarves, and rain hats for sun glasses, strappy sandals and short sleeve shirts. Now, let me get one thing out there, I am not nor have ever been what you might call a girly girl. I like to think that I’m in touch with my femininity but not obsessed with it. To be completely honest, I haven’t really been too concerned with fashion until the last year or two and even then I’m all for function over fashion. I won’t pin-point all of my evolutions here for you, though if asked I could likely tell you.

I don’t know if my evolution in to femininity is a result of me growing up or a result of the world in which I live and work. Given, I put more energy in to how I look in my office setting than I do at home or with friends. I find that if I have extra money I would rather spend it on a dinner out than a new pair of shoes. That doesn’t mean that I don’t look at a nice pair of heels and think “Damn, my legs would look nice in those.” I may think that, but I likely won’t be able to bring myself to spend over $50 on an item of clothing. Heck, I spent $20 on the cocktail dress for my company holiday party last year, and then another $10 on jewelry and I’ve worn the outfit three times. Though I can’t tell if that is just being frugal or me thinking that fashion isn’t worth all the money people put in to it.

I can’t put my finger on what makes me feel how I do. I just know that I am not “a material girl” or “high maintenance,” I do know that I like to feel like I look good but don’t feel like I have to be fully “done up” to go grocery shopping. I’m sure I could go on for pages about the evils of the fashion industry, but I won’t waste anyone’s time with that.

In the end I think what this all means is that I’m growing more comfortable skin. I think that’s all really anyone can ask for.

Eat the View: Part 4, Back to "The Word Garden"

The weather forecast predicted a high in the upper 70s over this past weekend, something for Portlanders to get excited about and cause to start making plans to be outside all day. I had ordered some tomato starts to be delivered in the beginning of April, and while I received them at their promised date, they have been relegated to living in our garden window until the weather was more appropriate for putting them in their permanent home outside. In the meantime, I have watched them inch ever higher and waiting impatiently for the day when they will start producing. Luckily I’ve had other things in the garden to be focusing my attention on to abate my “limited tomato based thinking”. While Hubby ran around mowing the lawn and other important yard tasks I took advantage of the warm weather and decided that my tomato plants would be able to survive outside now that the lows are hovering around fifty degrees.

Toward the end of March I planted four Oregon Snow Pea seeds in the hopes that one would sprout and produce snow peas for us to enjoy through the season. Much to my happy surprise all four sprouted and have been growing ever skyward. Noticing that they were starting to climb on one another I improvised a trellis with a tomato cage that wouldn’t come to use for a little while and strung some gardener’s twine diagonally between the bars to give the peas something else for their little tendrils to wrap around. When ShoeDiva came over to help me pull weeds on Saturday, she was shocked at the growth of the snow peas in the month since she had last seen them. Truth be told, I’m a little amazed at how quickly they’re growing too. But seeing as neither of us has really had any experience with veggie gardening our surprise should be no surprise.

The Guilty Conscience Strikes Again

I’ve written about this before – but I think it is a common topic among writers – finding inspiration. I have been so busy traveling for work lately that I have all but forgotten about my blogging duties. That could be just an excuse, but I’ll never tell if it is or not. Technically, I’m already doing better about my blogging consistency than I was last year and that is probably a good thing. I think I have subconsciously committed myself to posting to my blog at least once a week whether it’s a second hand article or I’m just “phoning it in”, and when I don’t I feel guilty. So I suppose that’s where blogs like this come in.

On my commute to work this morning I spent some time on the MAX thinking about what I should blog about next. I don’t want my posts to be too garden-centric, so I ruled that out. I don’t want to post about work or traveling for work, although that may come up at a later date, I’m tired of thinking about it right now. But again I come back to feeling like I’m writing for an audience and not for myself. In reality I should just be writing about whatever I want to write about and not what I think people might want to read. So, I guess ultimately this blog post is just going to be two things: me feeling guilty for not posting, and me not knowing what to write. Maybe I should just take the advice of my college professors and all of those years of participating in NaNoWirMo and just sit down with the intention to write and something will be produced. Lovely, I’m sure that will be incredibly entertaining.

I don’t know if anyone that I don’t know is reading this or not, but if you are reading this and would like me to write about something feel free to leave a comment. Cheers!

Eat the View: Part 3, In “The Word Garden”

The time of year that I have been anxiously waiting for since our first cold day of fall has finally arrived. Spring! Sadly the turning of the season of new life doesn’t necessarily mean that I can start putting my veggies in the ground just yet. I have been reading gardening blogs of people who live in a warmer climate and drooling over my garden’s potential – dreaming of the day when I can actually transplant my tomato starts in to the raised planter bed that Hubby and I built with the help of CodeMonkey and his lovely wife LadyNurse. Alas, it is still too cold and if I prematurely put the plants out it could damage them. So, the tomato starts have taken up residence in my kitchen window along with the basil, sage, oregano and marjoram starts. The snow peas I planted outside in a 5 gallon pot over a month ago seem to be growing quite happily in this cold weather. I am regretting, though, not having staggered planting them because now we will have an abundance of the peas all at once. Looks like I will be learning how to freeze fresh produce.

This is my first edible garden, and I would like to think that I’m taking it slowly and not getting too excited but it is hard to judge my level of excitement until I get to the “uh oh, I may have done too much” point. By the way, I am nowhere near that point yet. Once we get fully in to the swing of growing season it is likely that that is when I will look at my over abundance of crops and wonder what the heck I was thinking. In the mean time, I’m enjoying watching little sprouts pop up in the starter pots in my kitchen window and imagining the fun meals I can produce with them when the time comes.

If you would like to read my previous posts on the subject see: Part One, and Part Two

April is National Poetry Month

Dr. Maya Angelou said: “Poetry is music written for the human voice.” April is National Poetry Month and was first celebrated in 1996. It was created to promote attention to the literary form and history of poetry. How can you celebrate National Poetry Month? The Academy of American Poets has a list of thirty ways to celebrate poetry in April:

Read a poem a day – books of poetry can be found at your local library, or there are websites dedicated to poetry by certain authors or on certain subjects. One of my favorites is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

Write a poem of your own – use free verse, make a haiku, write a sonnet, the style doesn’t matter just the attempt. Writing a poem is not as complicated as some people might think, the most important part is being uninhibited and turning off your internal editor. Just write everything that comes to mind, you can edit it later. Choose a style of poetry that fits your subject, research rhyme scheme and meter standards to find out if your poem is a Couplet, Villanelle, or Shakespearian Sonnet.

Add a verse of poetry to your personal email signature – if you stumble across a line you enjoy while reading, share it with others. Make it short and to the point, and always site the source of the line.

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day – on April 17, 2009 carry a poem in your pocket and share it as you see fit with those around you.

Kay Ryan, the current Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009, said: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading."

27 Years, and All I Got Was This T-shirt

One of my coworkers pointed out today that now that I am at the ripe old age of 27, my age is a cubed number. He’s in the accounting department, and has a love for numbers, that’s all I need to say to explain that.

It’s strange to think that at 12:35am this morning I changed from being 26 to 27. You always hear people say things like “You’re only as old as you feel,” or “Age is just a number,” and even “Act your age, not your shoe size.” All are relative truisms, but I think I have come to mark my life more by events than by my age. A quote from the character Leonard in the show Big Bang Theory rings true to me: “My parents focused on celebrating achievements, and being expelled from a birth canal was not considered one of them.” It couldn’t have felt truer than it did a few weeks ago when I found out that a job I was hoping would be created was not opened due to budget constraints. This event sent me into a swirl of self doubt and to revisit my quarter-life-crisis stage. My first, and returning, thought was “I’m going to be 27, and a receptionist. I thought I would be doing more than that by now.” The thought that I should be doing something else haunts me frequently. It has haunted me since six months after I graduated from college.

All those thoughts disappeared though after I took a minute to reflect on my current position. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone that have found themselves without a job because of the recession. So, first I count my blessings that I have a job. Second, I have a good paying job with benefits. Third, and not the least of all, I actually enjoy my job. Yeah it’s not the most thrilling thing and not what I thought I would be doing but there’s something to be said for enjoying your job. I have always told myself to get a job doing work I enjoy and everything else will follow. I’d have to so that the only bad part about this job is the commute.

Here’s to another year, and more achievements to come.