Author: sajbat

NYC day 1

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The boy and I are in the big city for the week!

The day did not get off to an auspicious start as, halfway to the airport, I realized I had left our Broadway tickets on our desk at home. My husband was less than amused, and later grudgingly took the tickets to FedEx to deliver them to us tomorrow morning. After that it was a fabulous day.

The flight was incredibly smooth which I entirely credit to our highly experienced pilot.

We met up with Sapana at her place, had a quick bite to eat and then figured we’d head to the Met for the last hour or so.

The knights made a big impression:

As did the mummies:

And then, well, the museum closed.  The boy protested and successfully snuck past a few museum guards to catch just a few other exhibits.

Outside, he and Sapana did their best fountain impression:

We milled about for a bit and then decided to go for a quick walk in Central Park, but were distracted by the Ancient Playground, which is great! The boy had a fabulous time on the  (sort of) ziggurat.

Heading home, tired, he created his own subway perch:

And then we finished with a delish dinner of empanadas at a Latin restaurant in Brooklyn:

We came home and played a game of “whoonu” with Sapana, Sachin and Sapana’s roommate. The game consists of cards with random things listed on them, such as “baseball games,” “meatloaf,” and “dinosaurs.” You’re supposed to pick the cards that one of the players likes the most, and it rotates around players.

When it came to my turn, the boy chose “pot pies” for me. Now, I hate pot pies, and was about to rank that my least favorite choice. Unable to contain himself while I was deciding whether “roller coasters” or “bicycling” was my favorite, the boy began to giggle, “pot pies!” I changed strategy and quickly named pot pies as my absolute favorite thing in the world, then bicycling, roller coasters, and lastly “taking naps.”

He’s in bed now, ready to start another day of adventure tomorrow!

Nail-Biting Gardening

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Sunday and Saturday were beautiful. 80-90 degrees, sunny, perfect for frolicking outside, and just the sort of weather to lull a gardener into a false sense of security.

Needless to say, I was fooled.

We got a bit more ambitious with the garden this year–tearing out the front patch between the sidewalk and the street to make way for squash, watermelon, and chard.

Breaking up the plot of dandelions and dead grass was tough, backbreaking work that I watched while sitting on the porch drinking margaritas. Eric borrowed a pickaxe from a neighbor and swung it through the heavy clay soil for about 2 days. Even so, much of it is still hard as rock and I’m hoping that it’ll get better just by planting. Using an online calculator, I learned that I’d have to purchase 16 bags of compost to till in 3″ into that area. I settled for 4 and mixed it in. We left a patch of ground cover along the road and in between the two plots to maintain access for people to get out of their cars.

Saturday, I bought all my starts from the same person as last year.

Sunday, I couldn’t wait any longer. I planted, even though the snooty woman at Echter’s told me to wait.

A few years ago, I was talking about Colorado gardening with a friend, I can’t remember who. They said something along the lines of, “You know, I’m not really a ‘walls of water’ gardener.” Ever since then, I figured it was really really uncool to be a “walls of water gardener” and never gave them a second thought. Then last year I went to a different friend’s house, someone I think of as pretty cool, and she had walls of water up. I reconsidered my self-image and bought walls of water to protect my little seedlings this year.

Planted this year: 2 types of corn, rainbow chard, 2 types of pole beans, 3 types of cucumbers, 4 types of tomato, 1 tomatillo plant, 2 types of eggplant, 3 types of peppers, basil, oregano, dill, rosemary, onions, lettuce, peas, carrots, radishes, butternut squash, watermelon, thyme, lemongrass, chives, and beets.

The next day, it rained. And rained and rained and got down to about 32 degrees.

I was scared for my little plantlings. I texted Eric from work and told him to cover the cucumbers and squash.

Two days of cold and rain later, everything is fine!! I’m sort of ridiculously happy about that.

One of the cucumbers got a little crispy, but I think will make it:

And the tomato and tomatillo plants were snug in their homes:

The spinach that overwintered is probably ready to pick, with the new seeds doing okay.

The cilantro has grown into little trees, and the last of the radishes are ready to harvest:

The first of the pea blossoms are here!

The lettuce and onions are doing well, too:

And we even had a blessing from the garden butterfly/fairy:

Looking forward to watching everything (and everyone) grow this year!

(And as a last note, here’s a comparison where things were last year. So many more green plants this year, and so much deader grass. I don’t think it’s going to make it–I see some sort of gravel/flagstone in the future. I know, I know you all told me so.)

Harvest/Planting

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I love surprises, no matter how small.

Like these, for example, which I first noticed about six weeks ago:

Cilantro

The radishes I planted in April have done wonderfully.

I know there are many of you out there that abhor radishes. I used to be one of them. But if you toss them with a bit of olive oil and roast them, they are absolutely delicious. The boy gobbled them up.

The peas are also looking happy:

This year I wanted to know exactly what the dirt was made of, so to speak. I took a few clumps of soil from very different parts of the garden and took them to Echter’s Greenhouse for a soil test.

It took about 20 minutes and was $4 a test, which I thought was a worthwhile investment, though I’m sure the results are not particularly surprising to Colorado gardeners who actually know what they are doing. (For example, I was resoundly mocked by my neighbor for going over to borrow “the flat spade-y thing”.)

And the results? Well–the pH of the front garden soil which has had dying grass and dandelions for years was near perfect at 6.5. The newly dug up area near the house that hasn’t been touched for 2 years is not terrible at 7. And the beds I so diligently dug up and amended last year?  The pH is 8! Maybe that’s why things didn’t seem to grow as well as the community garden. Or it could be that none of the soil has any nitrogen. Potassium and phosphorous were okay, which seems to be typical for Colorado soil.

I’ll be adding blood meal for nitrogen, but are there any fixes for the alkalinity of the soil? Googling tells me that my choices are basically sulfur or adding compost yearly and waiting a few years for it to correct, neither of which sounds terribly appealing.

Buying starts tomorrow and hopefully getting them into the ground over the next week! Yay for Spring!

The Folding of Impossibly Small Clothing

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Parents of smallish children, a word of advice.

Whatever you do, do NOT fold laundry while watching the last season of “Friday Night Lights.”

Pick something a bit less poignant, such as “Maid in Manhattan,” or “The Sweetest Thing,” or even “The Proposal.”

Because if you don’t, what will happen is this: you will pick up some ridiculously small dress and begin to fold it. On the screen will be scenes of children acting like teenagers, growing up, growing away, and moving away. And you will realize that the ridiculously small dress you are folding was once a lot smaller, and will soon be replaced by larger and larger dresses (though, of course, judging by some of the clothes I see on adolescents they may not necessarily get that much bigger) and eventually you will simply not be folding any more clothes, as they will hastily be shoved into dorm drawers.

And then you will start to cry.

Spare yourselves and heed my words.

Etched Glass, PG version

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So after my last foray into glass etching, one of my dear friends emailed me and requested a set of glasses with, shall we say, rather more profane words.

A crafting gauntlet had been thrown down! (Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. But I thought it would be fun and a nice present.)

I got some glasses from World Market and used the same techniques as last time, taking some inspiration from stuff I’ve been reading lately.

I took Jenn’s advice and left the etching cream on overnight this time.  This gave a much nicer result on the glasses.  Unfortunately, I forgot that I had left them out, so when the boy ran downstairs in the morning and yelled up the stairs, “Hey, Mom, what do these words say?!” I was, for the first time, incredibly grateful that his reading isn’t quite that fluent yet.

In keeping with the family-friendliness of this blog, I will leave to your imagination the other letters and words that I made.

Beware of what you suggest I craft in the comments, for it may end up on your doorstep.

Birthday!

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The girl is 3! Unbelievable, really. I mean, look at this squashed up thing:

I love love love that little girl, but she was not a cute newborn. Sorry, sweetheart, if you’re reading this a few years later.

We threw a party for her, of course. I know she won’t entirely remember it but why shouldn’t she get to feel special for a day?

For the party, I got bags and wrote the kids’ names on them and had fabric markers at the party for them to decorate. Honestly, this didn’t work very well since once there as more than 2 children they all started running around like crazies. But it was a cute idea, no?

I made the paper circle garland in the pic above, using a 2 1/2″ craft circle punch, cardstock and some twine. I love it! We haven’t actually been able to make ourselves take it down yet, we like it so.

I’ve really been trying to avoid all the waste that often goes into these parties. From the paper or plastic goody bags (replaced by the canvas ones described above) to the junky plastic toys that are handed out at them, there’s just so much that ends up in the trash it’s appalling. For party favors, I cribbed one of the ideas I crowdsourced on facebook–painting terracotta planter pots with chalkboard paint, giving out chalk, dirt pellets and seeds.

I let my kids have at them before the party, and they loved them! I hope all the other kids had as much fun with them.

and for my fancy little girl, a Fancy Nancy cake!

So very cute. I ordered it from a local bakery to whom I gave minimal instructions and it was just lovely.

As for the party itself, I was of course running around and not very focused on getting pictures–I left that to the grandparents.

In a rather random twist of present-ing fate, my parents bought the girl an umbrella in China for her birthday. My mother-in-law sent a box with a raincoat and rainboots. All of this was completely unplanned, yet happened to be the exact same set. The girl could NOT have been more thrilled.

Happy Birthday, little girl.  May you always feel as beautiful as you do in your pink rain gear, whiskers painted on your face.

Wabi Sabi

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In the children’s section of the library the other day, I spied a book titled “Wabi Sabi.”  I’ve been hearing a lot about wabi sabi these days because it’s all over  modern home design blogs (another obsession of mine). The idea, as it relates to home design, is that not everything in a modern home needs to be sleek, metallic, completely finished. Something simple, quiet, old, comfortable is also beautiful. I checked out the book without reading it and brought it home.

Later that afternoon, sitting on our decidedly non-wabi sabi couch, I read the book to the boy.

It begins with a zen proverb: “An old pine tree can teach you the sacred truths.”

“But,” the boy began, “what does it mean? How can an old pine tree teach you?”

“Just let it roll around your head for a while, kiddo.”

So we went on–the book is about a Japanese cat named Wabi Sabi who sets out to learn the meaning of her name. Along the way she meets various creatures who give her hints and finally (*spoiler alert*) a wise monkey who teaches her what it means to be wabi sabi. The illustrations are torn-paper collages and quite beautiful. Each page also has a haiku on it, which the boy is familiar with from the Jon Muth books I mentioned earlier.

One of these haikus starts by talking about something being alive and dying at the same time. “How can that be?” he asked.  I love moments like this, when you can see the little gears in his head turning.  When he hears a new idea and tries to process and make sense of it in a way that he can understand. It’s almost as if you get a window into the elasticity of a child’s brain. The page has an illustration of fallen autumn leaves. “Well, I said, it’s like those leaves that have just fallen.  They’re still a bit alive, but they’re dying also.” “Oh,” he said, not entirely getting it. Still, he loved the book.

A few days later, while walking to the bus stop, he spied a dried out yarrow bush. “Too bad that plant died, Mama,” he said.

“Not entirely, kiddo, look–there’s green leaves at the bottom. This plant comes back every springtime.” I said.

He gasped, “It’s alive and dying at the same time!! Mom! This is Wabi Sabi!”

And so it was. Since then he points out everything that is wabi sabi, sometimes a bit incorrectly, but so happy to have learned for himself just what it is.

Spring Awakening

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Can I just start by saying that I must have tempted the blogging gods with my last post because the kids have been nothing short of terrible.  Horrible. The girl throws tantrums at the drop of a hat.  Or the suggestion of a hat, as in “Let’s go pick out your clothes!” This results in a drop-to-the-floor-and-kick-mommy tantrum, screaming at the top of her lungs, and all I can do is walk away until she calms down.  Once I start to walk away, she purposefully PEES ON HERSELF so that I CAN’T walk away and have to go attend to her and then think about how much it’s going to cost to replace our upstairs carpet. Grrr. I guess that’s what the terrible twos and threes are all about.

This post, however, is not supposed to be about the children:

So those are expected, right? I mean, I planted the bulbs on purpose.

What I was excited to see was the stuff that is the result of sheer laziness:

Oregano

Cilantro

Spinach

 

Chives

You may remember that I briefly mentioned the fall crop I tried to plant in this post last year which yielded absolutely nothing.  I intended to mulch them heavily but never got around to it.  Over the winter I figured the few days we had of -10 below weather would have killed them all off, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the little bits of green. The stuff that is growing is hardy–I’ve never seen spinach leaves quite that sturdy before.  The ground around it is dry and barren, so I’m not sure that they’ll do well in the long run, but if these plants have fought to make it through winter they deserve a chance to live…so I can then kill and eat them.

I guess it’s time to start thinking about the garden again, especially the early stuff like peas and such. I need to redo the topsoil and the compost, but I can’t bring myself to kill these little sprouts so I’m going to let them run their course and redo those patches when the next round starts in May.

For the real gardeners out there, are these little guys going to grow at all or should I just turn them over and get new soil now? And do I need to start watering them now or should I wait?

I’ve got some new ideas planned for this year–corn, squash, and more bean varietals. Looking forward to getting started!

 

Marble Jar

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You may remember an incident from October of last year in which the boy was caught carving up his dresser and lying about it. My friend Geoff made a comment in which he described using a Supernanny technique of putting marbles in a jar to reward good behavior, and so we started as well.

It took a bit of parental training until we were doing it right.  I think at one point I had a marble count of -2 and figured that I must be doing something wrong. The boy would, rather cagily, game the system as well. He’d set the table without anyone asking and then ask, “Didn’t I set the table so nicely? Don’t I deserve 2 marbles?”

We also took marbles out for bad behavior, and using the jar as a threat was a good deterrent. Once he had a particularly bad day and had run upstairs and slammed the door in Eric’s face and then proceeded to kick the door. Eric opened the door and told him to come downstairs, NOW. It was the verbal equivalent of dragging him downstairs by holding his ear. Eric picked up the nearly full marble jar and began POURING OUT marbles back into the source jar. The boy started hyperventilating and shaking. He lost about half of the hard won marbles with that.

He never slammed the door again.

Finally, this week, the jar was full. I had at first said that the prize was going to be watching (an edited) “Star Wars,” but the boy rejected this, saying it would give him nightmares. “Well, what do you want?” I asked.

“I know!! I want a real comic book!! Batman!!” and he started to giggle uncontrollably with excitement at the idea.

This seemed fair enough, so I looked up the comic book store (incidentally, their logo is in Comic Sans, which is possibly the only acceptable use for that font) and off we went. I expected the store to have a few random people wandering about that looked like the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

Instead, there was a line out the front door, and I learned that we’d stumbled into a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, whatever that is. The place was packed!

We looked around for the more kid-friendly comics–most of the stuff nowadays is really dark and violent, it seemed to me. The “Family Comic” section was a little TOO lightweight even for the boy. He’s not really interested in Darkwing Duck or Minnie Mouse comics. Browsing around the store, I got a glimpse of what the next 12 years is going to look like.

We eventually found some older Batman comics that were pretty good for him, and he was so, so excited!

Back into the jar went all the marbles, to be earned and redeemed again, hopefully sooner than 5 months this time!