Pretty Things and Jumping Beans

I don't know about you, but events from the past couple weeks have been difficult to process.  Day to day this looks like

Except without the glowing skin and perfectly styled hair.  Gee, it's a great time to be alive!

When not crying over, well, Earth, we've been doing day-to-day type things.  Nice things.  Things I like.  Such as having long, involved conversations about toast.  This is one of the great things about having a five year old.

We can stumble downstairs, sleepy-eyed, and sit on the kitchen floor with a loaf of bread and discuss the magic of melting butter and strawberry preserves on toast.  Not everyone will do these things with me, you know.

Then we admire the beauty to be found in eggs.  Yes, eggs.  I have never claimed to lead a life fraught with adventure and intrigue.  Eggs do just fine for me.  Big ol' thanks to Derek's parents for being such good sharers.

Speaking of beauty:

These plants are all over our local public garden right now, just for me.  Well, me and whomever else just loves striped, striated leaves, which is surely everyone, right?  

Thousands of species of flowers and plants for our children's viewing pleasure, and what do they do when we visit the gardens?

They jump off the temporary wooden structure- and not the front, which is supposed to be explored and climbed on, but the back, where you discover which planks are coming loose and beginning to swivel alarmingly under the weight of your offspring.

"Ninja training," they call it.  "Future broken limbs," I holler at them from my comfortable bench in the shade of some nearby trees while taking pictures of them engaging in risky behavior.

Some refer to this as natural consequences parenting.  I think of it more in terms of "How much can I wear them out before bedtime?"  

For the (child protective services) record, no one broke any bones, and I drained their batteries as low as I dared knowing we had yet to eat supper.

Gardening: The Good, the Bad, and the Vile

Important things have been happening around here.  If you consider tomatoes important, that is.  I really don't know why you wouldn't.

This was my first tomato of the season, a Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato from a plant generously given to me by Derek's mom.  I picked this lumpy fellow and then immediately sacrificed him for my BLT needs.  He was delicious.

I got the first two of what promises to be several hundred yellow pear tomatoes, if their blooms are any indication.  

These look like they should have cartoon faces, canes, and tap shoes for a jaunty little dance number, don't you think?

This means I now get to add diced yellow tomato to almost every dish I make.  This also means my family now gets to leave a pile of diced yellow tomato on their plates after they've eaten everything else.  I don't know why I insist on planting more than a single tomato plant every year when I'm the only one in the house who will eat them.  The heart wants what the heart wants.

My rain lily yet again went from the pot-full of brown, withered leaves I pulled from its winter perch in the basement to magically full of blooms.  Every year I am amazed by this plant, and tell it so every day when I water it, whispering, How are you so amazing?  I don't understand how you do this every year!  

Sometimes I feel like I wasn't meant to live in town, where other humans can bear witness to me doing things like whispering to something that can't whisper back.  Oh, gosh, but thank God it can't.   Whisper back, I mean. Looks like I'm supplying my own nightmares tonight.

The roses were particularly beautiful this year.

It almost made me want to plant some more rose bushes, which is a little miraculous, as I've tended to look at roses with no small amount of disdain in the past.  I'm really not big on divas, floral or otherwise, and any plant that needs to be pruned in a specific way and lovingly tucked in and catered to every fall is really too much for me to handle.  Our local public garden had some really beautiful Buck Roses last time we were there, though- Buck roses being a variety developed by an Iowan bearing the last name of Buck who wanted roses that could actually survive an Iowa winter.  

I particularly liked these, as they were a beautiful peach color that I managed to capture not at all in this photo, but still- "Sunbonnet Sue."  Someone remember that for me.

If you follow along on Instagram, you've seen that anytime I leave our yard, my plant-related activities don't go so swimmingly.  To summarize, what started as a gorgeous blackberry crop

ended in maggots.  In my kitchen.

And yet somehow, I still believe this:

Thanks Cassi (I think it was Cassi) for sharing!

For now, though, I think I'll stick to my own yard.

Injurious

It's front porch season.  Hallelujah.

While I love how this kind of weather beckons each member of our family outdoors, it also means that our children are finding new and inspired ways to wage war against one another.  

I got a call from Derek while on a run recently.  He wasted no time in saying an incident had occurred, please come home.  Thankfully I was less than a mile from our house, so I was able to dart right home, up the stairs, and into the bathroom, where Atticus was bent over the tub, face covered in blood.

I quickly looked him over, saw the giant goose egg on his head, found the source of the bleeding, and overall decided that the actual wounds were much less concerning than their cause:  Knitting needles, thrown at him by his sister in a fit of pique.  

By the time I got there, she was more upset than he was, yet still managed to inform me between sobs that yes, she had thrown her knitting needles at her brother, but that she never thought they would actually hit him; she had no idea her aim was that good!

Caedmon didn't have much to say about the whole thing, but still maintains that "Atticus deserved it," as he has informed a number of people.

At this point Atticus the Injured has mostly healed, although he had two relatively deep holes in his scalp for days.  No telling on any emotional injuries.  

Speaking of running (were we?), I've found the perfect design for asthmatic runners:

Ideal t-shirt design would also include a little pocket for our inhalers, of course.  

My peonies had a short season this year, and one bush didn't bloom at all.  I still managed to bring a few indoors.

The kaleidoscope container planting at Reiman Gardens has been changed again:

Succulents!

Kaleidoscopic succulents!  

And last but not least, I have finally found the most perfectly thoughtful gift for my sister who, when we were children, couldn't sleep for terror of her china doll, even after it had been removed from her room, her closet, anywhere within crawling-up-onto-her-bed distance.

Baby is angry.

My First Scary Bulb Sale

Yesterday morning, the nearby public garden had its first ever Bag'O'Bulbs sale, where, if you showed up at a certain gate with grocery bags, you could get freshly dug tulip bulbs for $10 a bag.

The whole shebang began at 8 AM, which means I was there promptly at 8, eagerly clutching a bag and a Hamilton (maybe in a few years it will be a Hamilton/Mott/Truth/Anthony/Stanton/Paul, because apparently it's just too much to actually put a woman on the front of the bill, so instead they'll try to appease us with five women on the back, where they belong, amIright, fellas?) and wearing multiple layers of clothing, because it's May, so of course it's 30 degrees outside!

Gracious, that was a mess of a paragraph, wasn't it?  Ah, well.  I meant every word.  I really was there at 8.

I was joined by a host of fellow gardeners, and I, along with one other family from my church, probably brought the average age down by four decades.  This made me think, not for the first time, that I was made to be an old person; I mean, I love to garden and talk about birds, I am always cold, and I can pinch a penny until it screams for mercy.

Now that my stereotyping is done for the day, I can tell you about the actual event, which was a little bit of a fiasco.  I felt bad for the director of the whole thing, as he seemed to realize that it was not going that well and even went so far as to say multiple times, "Keep in mind this is our first year, and the first year of any event is always a learning experience, so this will only get better and better each year."

Their method in this inaugural year was to have us pay our money, shuffle into a small area just inside the gate, and wait for twenty minutes.  Then, an employee would drive up in a gator with a trailer attached, which was piled high with freshly-dug tulips.  At that point, The Frenzy would ensue.

You know those photos and videos you've seen of Black Friday hordes swarming through stores, hunting for marked down electronics they probably won't even use in a year?  It was kind of like that.  Or maybe sharks circling prey.  I like that analogy better, as it tickles me to think of these gardeners as predators.

I watched two big, full trailers come, be mobbed by grasping tulip junkies, and five minutes later go, depleted.  The third trailer just happened to pull up and stop right in front of me, so I filled my bag as quickly as I could lest someone cut me with their AARP card, and left.

In addition to his pseudo-apology, the director had some other interesting information, such as his suggestion to perhaps come later in the morning next year:  "I've been to these bulb sales at other gardens, and everyone lines up as soon as it opens, thinking that if they come later, they won't get any.  Well, folks, we have 47,000 tulips bulbs we're digging up today, so I promise, there will be bulbs for you to buy, even if you walk in at 10 AM."

I asked him what they've done with the bulbs in years past, since this was the sale's first year, and he told me they've always been composted, to which I audibly gasped and clutched my heart.  He also said that they can't simply give the bulbs away, but have to charge money because they're a public institution.  He was also very careful to instruct everyone there to plant their bulbs that weekend, NOT to store them over the summer until fall planting, and explained why.  Feel free to google this, because I'm sure not explaining it to you.


It really didn't feel like I'd gotten that many bulbs, but when I opened up the bag that afternoon, I counted out 65 BULBS.  For $10!

Atticus got to help me plant all 65 late yesterday because of some choices he made earlier in the week.  There's just nothing like manual labor for behavioral adjustment, is there?

I have no idea what colors these will be next spring, only that they'll be a mix, like what we saw when we were at the garden two weeks ago.  I'm sure by then I'll have completely forgotten any of this ever happened, so what a pleasant surprise it will all be!  I do have plans on being at next year's bulb sale, except next year I'll arrive later, and wear more armor.  I can't wait!

Gardens, But Not My Own

A week ago, even though it was chilly and wet out, we went to our local public garden one day after school.  This turned out to be a marvelous idea for a number of reasons, such as having the garden to ourselves, letting the children run off their post-school jitters/wiggles/mania,

and, of course, tulips.

Oh, the tulips.  Lavish in their beauty, and every time we rounded another corner we found another bed stuffed with tulips.

And just in case tulips aren't your thing (is this possible?  Is there a Tulip Haters Anonymous out there?), there were also certain other items of interest.

Those cardinals, the birdbath, water, everything, are made out of Lego bricks.  

Those deer are made of Lego bricks.

That spider suspended above our children is made out of Lego bricks.  

Are you sensing a theme here?  If not, well, honestly, I don't know what's wrong with you.  I have made this as obvious as possible.  Also, for the sake of your Monday, please embiggen this photo and take a closer look at those children.  I feel like I should probably admonish them to please let me get a nice photo every once in a while, but truth be told, these kinds of pictures are my very favorite.  Polished, we are not.  I am comfortable with this knowledge.

There were many other astonishing feats of Lego art we admired, but I'm tired of talking about Legos.  Let's get back to tulips.

If I can remember come fall, I'd like to try and get my hands on some of these Budlight tulips.  There has to be a reason they have that name, right?  Was the person who developed this particular type of tulip a big beer drinker?  Does anyone else besides me care?  

Tomorrow, let's look at my tulips (you just can't wait, right?!) and maybe someone will be able to tell me what to do with the Dead Zone, aka that patch of our yard where good plants go to die.  I swear I can almost hear them screaming for mercy when I plant them there, like a cartoon shoe facing The Dip.  I need help.  With gardening, not psychiatric or otherwise.  I realize parts of this paragraph may have convinced you otherwise, though.

Important Pi Day Happenings

It's spring break around here, and when I woke up this morning it was cool and misty and foggy:  Perfect weather for a trip to Reiman Gardens!

The children didn't quite share my opinion- I mean, they were happy enough to go to the public garden, but didn't understand why foggy and chilly made it perfect.  I, in my more advanced years, knew that such conditions would serve the two-fold purpose of 1) keeping away any crowds, and 2) make it possible for us to pretend that we were on the English moors, or wandering through an English winter garden, or any number of things foggy and English.

And I was right, on all counts.  

We saw all of two other visitors.  This is possibly also due to the fact that in March, there's not a lot blooming in the garden- not a single thing, actually, at least outdoors- but there are still things to do and see and hills to ramble over.

We found a spiderweb, which for once I was happy to see, as our winter was mild enough that the freeze only reached a depth of six inches.  This makes me worry that we'll have a buggy spring and summer, so bring on the spiders!  As long as they stay out of our house!  And away from my hands when I'm gardening.  So bring on the shy spiders!

There were some not-so-shy red-winged blackbirds sending up a racket in the lily pond.  I was surprised at how long the kids wanted to pause and observe these.

The kaleidoscopes in the children's area is forever one of my favorite features.  We found they still have wintery plantings in the container, which created some beautiful fractal designs.

Look into my eye.

Adelaide and I also made a quick trip into the women's bathroom, not because females feel a compulsive need to travel in herds to those places, but because you never know what kind of flowers they're going to have in there.

Live daffodils!  Just what Iowans need after a cold winter (although apparently not cold enough, hmmph), and on a dreary spring day.  Keeper of the Reiman Gardens Women's Bathroom (I'm pretty positive that's an official title), thou art wise.  Strangely, the boys reported no flowers in the men's room.  I'm not sure what that means.

On the way home, Adelaide saw a sign for "Apple Pi," and after I explained to her that today was 3/14- or Pi Day- she begged to make a pie.  I told her a bunch of true things, about how I already had a million things to do this afternoon, like laundry and calling about the possibility of a new hot water heater (a tale for another day, hopefully), and packing for tomorrow's trip south (beware, thieves; the muscle's staying behind to guard the new sconces).  She cared about none of these things.  All she cared about was pie.

I ended up making a deal with her:  I would roll out the crust if she did the rest, from finding a recipe to making sure we had all the ingredients to prep work to mixing, all of it.  She chose Strawberry Pie, and then she just, like, made it.  Because yes, baby thunder thighs are oh-so-squeezable, but older kids are where it's at.

I may have dropped the ball on supper (and packing... and most of the laundry) because the outdoors and my flower beds beckoned, but who cares?  We have pie!

Yes, she's wearing different clothes.  When one of your children asks if they can shower, you don't ask questions, you just let it happen.  She was in her jammies at 3 PM, but again, who cares?  We have pie!

A Rain Barrel, Butterfly, and Not Dying a Fiery Death List

• There was no school yesterday, so the kids and I spent a blustery morning at the nearby public garden, where I did not covet my neighbor's maidservant nor his cattle, but I did covet this:

Aren't they beautiful?  That downspout goes directly on top of the rain barrel!  And those handy, well-off-the-ground spigots?  Swoon.  

We're big on water conservation in the first place; for all that I plant, I water very little, usually just our front container plantings, and part of my end-of-the-day routine is to go around and gather all the cups in the kitchen and dumping the leftover water into a pitcher to help water those front flowers (I just couldn't stand to pour another of those half-full cups down the drain every night, and I try not to do it when anyone's sick), but a rain barrel has long been on my Want list.  We get so much rain here, it really does feel wasteful not to utilize as much of it as possible.  Anyone have any recommendations on rain barrels?  What to avoid, what has worked for you, etc?

• I saw this butterfly in the butterfly house:

It was huge and beautiful-ugly and as such reminded me of the huge, beautiful-ugly orange-white-and-black sofa set my best friend's parents had in their front room throughout our growing up years.  I don't know how many times I collapsed on that couch and loveseat after hours of through-the-night choreography sessions (basically what our sleepovers consisted of).  You never know when nostalgia is going to strike, do you?  

• We took a ride on an old train over the weekend, and, because it was an out-and-back route (I'm so sorry, I just can't seem to keep myself from over-hyphenating today, not to be confused with over-caffeinating, which I am also doing today.  Perhaps the two are connected?  I usually get very, very angry when people insist on finding causal relationships between two things that are tenuously connected at best, but I think in this one I'll give myself a pass.  For this post, at least, we'll say over-caffeinating causes over-hyphenating.  Except it doesn't.)...

Where was I?

Pretty.  Deadly.  Pretty deadly.

Oh, yes.  It was an out-and-back route, which means we had to go over a tall, tall, FAR FAR FAR off the ground bridge, on an old, antique train.  Have I mentioned my terror of bridges?  How much I hate them, especially when they go over water?  Have I mentioned that it's worse when you're on a rickety train on a rickety track?  (Right, so it may not have been that rickety; I'm sure it's all in good repair, but the only trains I've ridden have been subways and the trains from Connecticut into New York and back, and they are an entirely different animal.)

The worst part was, while still traversing the bridge, a good portion of the large family in front of us all rushed to one side of the car to see the view out those windows and I was like, "LET'S PLAY A LITTLE GAME CALLED "DON'T UPSET THE TRAIN CAR!"  WINNER DOESN'T GO PLUNGING TO THEIR DEATH FAR BELOW!"

Atticus, at least, felt my pain.

The Smart One

Whilst Caedmon spent most of the trip something like this:

Everyone turned black-and-white immediately upon entering the old-fashioned train cars.  Or I applied an "Inkwell" filter to this photo in Instagram.  Pick your poison.

I'm sure Adelaide had an equally adorable expression on her face during the ride, but I'm afraid I didn't capture that, as I was busy praying for the survival of everyone on board, even the would-be train-tippers.  You're welcome, fellow passengers.

This Week: A List

This week we

• Went to the local public garden, where the kids ran around,

and I took pictures of plants I've decided I can no longer live without,

Ornamental millet, you complete me.

and the kids ran around,

and I took more pictures of plants I can't live without.

They had all kinds of water plants in containers throughout the garden.  Why has this never occurred to me?  Fill something with water, then grow water lilies on top!  Brilliant!

And a direct result of all that running, not to mention half the reason we go:

• Won a golf tournament.  Well, Derek won a golf tournament, but I'm counting it as a family victory.  I don't have a picture of that, but I do have a picture of him winning at Chinese checkers.

Derek is one of those people who somehow wins all manner of things.  This is infuriating to Adelaide.  If an impassioned rant is what your life is missing right now, you should ask her about it.

• Played with legos.

Okay, so the boys played with legos, Derek won a golf tournament, and I'm reading this book right now:

It's, like, mondo good.

Adelaide is reading this:

She claims that hers, too, is mondo good.

Seriously, though, those are all container water gardens!