Lily-kins

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Merridee

Lily is my sweet, sweet angel and we have tons of fun. OK, mostly she just lays around and watches what I am doing — she has excellent supervisory skills. Or she chills on the couch while I am at work and barks at the mailman, who she is sure is plotting against house and home. She also loves to bark at neighbor Charles and then goes and begs at his door for the treats he SPECIFICALLY buys for her (whore!). Usually she gets a walk at least 5 out 7 days, and when she doesn’t she has been in the yard with me all day and we are both pretty beat. She loves to meet me at the door and racing around the back yard barking at stuff. And she also loves belly rubs, eating cat poop and wookie yells when she thinks we are going for a walk. And even when she doesn’t want to sleep on the rug by my bed, she always comes and says goodnight before heading back to the couch. We have a pretty good thing going on here.

But every once in a while I worry she is feeling neglected — the looks she can give when I leave and she knows it isn’t for work (she always knows!) can break my heart! In the summer, I didn’t want to bring her with me cause my little black truck can get crazy hot fast. But now that things are cooling down, I let her run short errands with me. No worries about getting all of that girth up into the cab — she flies in like it is her birthday surprise!

She is looking pretty sad cause we are home after running errands. But she was all smiles on the road. She did get kind of twitchy when I ran into a shop really fast — acted like she thought I had abandoned her.

So she likes the car but she usually isn’t very interested in where we end up. I tried taking her to the dog park, Sauvee Island, etc., a few times and usually we get there, she runs around for less than 5 minutes and then comes and stands by me like she is ready to go. Since she doesn’t really play fetch, doesn’t do water, and after the sniffing, isn’t really into other dogs, it gets boring for both of us pretty fast.

But I do like to take her with me when I go and hang out at Shirley’s house and since that is where Lily used to live, I know she is welcome. (Other friends’ houses, things can get sticky — haven’t risked a Cosmo the cat and Lily introduction yet, and often where I go is not where I stay and don’t want to leave her alone in a strange place while we are out playing.) Lily is always thrilled to see Shirley but then she quickly remembers this is the evil place that caused her to lick half of her arm hair off. Part of me thinks it is good for her to remember how good she has it now. Shirley’s other dog Merlin is Lily’s arch-enemy — only Merlin is too dopey to understand. They don’t really fight, but that is because Lily hides under the table. But she does get really clingy with me and will even sit outside the bathroom door to make sure I am not leaving her there.

Lily quickly remembers why she doesn’t like it at Shirleys — Once her hellos to Shirley are over she is ready to go.

The arch-enemy. Not plotting evil but just a spastic doof. He is a collie like Lily and can be smart but usually he is just a pain in the butt.

Shirley’s little boy Logan almost always gives me a lecture about how Lily is his dog and I can’t take her home with me again. Then he forgets and, much to Lily’s relief, I take her home with me again.

Spring Staging

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Merridee

The storm at the end of September put a full stop on summer. Week before it was hot sultry summer; the week after the air had that crisp autumn bite. Suddenly it was foggy in the mornings burning off to golden afternoons and darn right cold nights. Like I said, the yard was starting to wind down for the year. Especially the garden. The tomatoes all split and the bean vines turned soggy. Time to rip out the garden. And try a winter garden for the first time. So after working 10 days in a row, I finally had a weekend (no one to blame but myself since I AM the person who does the scheduling now.)

Everything got ripped out except the carrots (which have been long, big and delicious), arugula, late august planted peas and radishes.

I threw in some brussels sprouts, leeks, onions, a winter lettuces, just to see. However, the next morning I discovered that bare dirt equals neighborhood cat litter box — Lily was in heaven. So not sure if anything is going to grow or I will be just smelling cat-poop breath this winter.

After sorting the garden, I wanted to get some bulbs in. So last spring, I toured the awesome tulip fields up by Mom and Dad’s and the master plan was to order some bulbs from those farms and have the folks bring them down. But the timing and my vacation lazy foiled that plan. Plus I was nervous about the squirrel epidemic we seem to have going on in this neighborhood. Seriously, there are about a bazillion of them — much to Lily’s delight. She has biffed it on the garden beds and fences numerous times trying to get one. Thankfully she gracefully pretends it didn’t happen and jauntily returns to smile at me. She really isn’t serious about catching them, she enjoys the chase. But the nasty little rodents can be mayhem on bulbs. And, swear on my soul, the more I spend on bulbs the more likely they are to find them delicious! So instead of the fancy Skaggit County tulips, I went the Fred Meyer route. But what I lack in pedigree, I am making up for in volume! So I planted a 152 bulbs in the front yard this weekend (and destroyed my bulb digger in the process). If the squirrels don’t eat them all, I should have a colorful spring.

60 tulip, 60 crocus, 24 hyacinth, 8 paperwhites. There are already some daphs under the window and grape hyacinth by the drive way, otherwise those would have been included in the mix.

Feeling Tropical

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Merridee

I have never been much a fruit person. True, I am super whorey for blueberries and figs (hence the 2 fig trees and 4 blueberry bushes I promptly planted in the yard) and I like cherries and plums (again, note my fruit tree choices). The best thing about the Pacific Northwest is the berries and I used to go buy mixed berry flats at the farmers market and gobble them up until bad things happened to my bum (totally worth it!) But apples, oranges get a shrug from me. Apricots and peaches are hairy and kiwi fuzz makes my tongue itch. Pineapple is fine but I don’t go out of my way or ever think about buying it, even when it is pre-cut. Basically, at pot-lucks, buffets, the fruit tray gets a pass from me.

But last spring when I was scouring Portland Nursery for fun plants to buy, I did throw in a pineapple sage, mostly because the plant looked exceptionally healthy and it was kind of different. I brought it home and planted it and basically forgot about it. I only remembered it when I was ripping out the endless clover and accidentally pulled up a branch with a bunch on roots on the end and wondered what it was — it smelled crazy good. I rooted around for the tag and discovered that this lush, huge plant was that pineapple sage. So this was back in August, and we all remember August (or we are trying not to). Since then I occasionally thought I should do something fun with the aromatic delight — put it in mango salsa for fish tacos or have a party and make majitos. But I don’t usually do majitos and mangos are really the most annoying fruit (except for maybe pomegranates — and there you have to deal with the seeds and even then, they aren’t proportionally delicious.) Even so, the plant was now on my radar and I am very pleased with it.

Then suddenly last week, when everything else in the yard is making its ways toward being finished for the year, this sage decided it was getting ready to bloom. And then it did — in red! It has sprays of little red trumpet flowers all over it and has been attracting hummingbirds and my smiles!

Not the best picture, but the pineapple sage really does look striking with asters.

Well, This Blows

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Merridee

So I mentioned I am on vacation and that it has been crazy stormy. Things finally dried out enough today for me to go and assess the damage for real. I know that there was flooding and power outages all of over town at the beginning of the week. And Lily and I had tromped our way through some puddles, leaves and downed tree limbs on her walks. And I knew that some of my flowers had not faired well but today I took a full inventory. The good news is that nothing permeant was damaged, the bad was a lot of floppy flowers. But the really big sad was my very cheerful sunflowers. They were all laying on the ground, sad, broken and soggy. (Too depressing to even take a photo of.) But I salvaged what I could and brought the smaller blooms inside.

A few sunflowers, cosmos, asters and feverfew.

For someone who likes to grow flowers, I know that my next career won’t be florist — I am shit at arranging flowers. Always looks like a hot mess.

Behind the retaining wall and the cosmos was my other big tragedy center. They had basically all flopped.

All the cosmos and some most of the bachelor buttons and asters fell over with no hope of propping them up again. I chopped some of the worse ones but tried to coax most of them back into looking decent. Also the yard waste bin was full.

The asters in the front south side bed and herb bed also fell over. I left the front bed but did a little trim on the herb bed because we couldn’t walk down the path.

I eventually tried to prop these up but didn’t chop. A frost will be here soon enough and then I’ll cut them back for real. Also seriously bummed out that the davidii at the far right of the this bed suddenly up and died on me. Others are doing great.

Waking on the Brighter Side

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Merridee

While things are finally getting a little easier, they haven’t been great. New guy is getting there but needy and pointing out that all of our training materials are basically crap. We haven’t had a new hire in 5 years and a lot has changed in that time. And we are launching a website redesign and no one really remembered that staff needs to be trained, so “Merridee is good at training, she’ll do it.” Thanks guys! After months and weeks of stress and drama, I am desperate for a break. Thankfully I do the scheduling now. So I put myself down for a week off — and just in time for my birthday and the first anniversary of me in the house.

Her favorite trick is to rest her chin on the side of my bed and whine when she thinks I should get up. She HATES it when I read in bed before getting up in the morning.

So the first three days of my vacation it rained — a lot! Which was the perfect excuse to lay in bed, sleep and be lazy. Lily HATED it! She was so confused when after she whined for hours, I would get up, take her out, feed her, wander around for 10 minutes and decide go back to bed. She would come and check on me every hour or so and I would try to explain to her that she gets to sleep all day all of the time and now it was mummy’s turn. I would manage, driven by guilt, to get up long enough to take her for walks when there was window when the rain paused. But for the most part, pile of lazy! Loved it.

But after 3 days, the weather and I had seemingly done our thing and was ready for reality again. It was still pretty soggy outside, so I decided I couldn’t tolerate another winter waking up in such a poopy brown depressing room. I had been hemming and hawing about what color to paint my room for months now and couldn’t really decide, which is why I hadn’t tackled it yet. I needed something bright to battle the dark winter months. AND CEILINGS SHOULD BE WHITE. So I went with a color that had worked well in the other house — bright yet soothing — Chapel Wall, which is basically cream. Boring I know, but also bright yet soothing.

I strung out the painting process over 4 days. 2 days for ceilings and 2 days for walls. For a 9×13 foot room, that is really milking it. I took lots of breaks, made some lovely food and pondered future arrangements for after. Also contemplated decorations, since I basically didn’t do any decorating in that room when I moved in. By Friday of my vacation I had finished up, and managed to do all of the styling that was going to happen at this point. Not a decadent sanctuary, but a huge improvement on what it was.

Once again, my furniture doesn’t really fit the space but I love it all too much to get rid of it. The mirror was Grandma Hanson’s, the dresser I got in middle school, headboard I refinished, lamp and books were Grandparents Doman.

I took the closet doors off when I first moved in. I have hated closet doors for years. But I knew at times the mess inside does need to hide, so I hung the curtain rod I insisted on bringing from the Rex and then lost one of the finials for in front of it.

I don’t really like my standing mirror anymore but I don’t have room in my bathroom to do my make-up in there, so it had to stay and be inconvenient. The Renoir poster was a present from Kevin when he was an intern in D.C., so is 20+ years old and looks like it. The hanging lamp I inherited when someone left in the basement at the Rex (I have suspicions but that makes me want to keep it more — bitch owes me.) Blanket my mom made me, little table and then purple shelf.

Got the lace curtains hung at the correct height and then put the old bathroom shelf in the corner to hold all of the books and bed stuff. I don’t love this bit but am to cheap to shop for anything new at this point.

I am keeping my eyes pealed for something awesome to hang over the bed. Also contemplating the pros and cons of another hanging light, maybe something from Ikea — keeping my options open.

The Overall[s] Adventure

Monthly Archives: October 2013