Of impulse shopping and miscommunication

A 20-year-old two-person hot tub

What do you do if you and your husband accidentally get a huge bargain on a hot tub that neither of you wants? Here's the story.

Pick a Pretty Posy

A garden bouquet with salvia, chives, poppies, and a peony.

[This was going to be a quick-and-dirty blog post: snap a couple of pictures, add a narrative, and Bob's-yer-uncle. It didn't work out that way because I rushed the photography and had to redo my shoot TWICE more. Three hours later, I'm just starting to write.]

I love cut flowers. I know that some people believe them to be frivolous or even wasteful (they just die, right?), but I love bringing that splash of colour into my home, to enjoy as long as it lasts. And judging by the number of "likes" my arrangements receive on Facebook, I'm not alone. 

I read a blog somewhere that proposed a "bunch and fluff" method of arranging your flowers. I was to grab the bunch, stuff it loosely in the vase and just "fluff" it and let things fall as they may. It didn't work very well for me. Today, I share my tips for arranging flowers, using plants from our garden.

Watching a Fantasy Come to Life

My favourite little sitting area.

On June 1, 2010, I was fantasizing about our house in Ottawa. For the previous five years, we'd been living in Colorado Springs, which has a very arid climate, and I was looking forward to living somewhere where plants thrived on rainwater rather than irrigation.

We had also decided that we would install an in-ground pool, as we had done in one of our previous Ottawa homes.

Backyard Menagerie and Kitchen Mystery

The weather this weekend was absolute bliss. This afternoon (after running a few errands), I threw on my swimsuit, grabbed a cold beer and my Kindle, and made my way to the patio.

After splashing inelegantly for a while, I sat in the shade to read. I hadn't been sitting there long when I heard some chittering and chattering from beneath the bird feeder.

Short, dark, and handsome

But he (she?) was not alone.

A cute little redhead

Surprisingly, they seemed to get along quite amicably. Eventually the squirrel left, and the chipmunk was joined by two nondescript little birds.

"There's plenty for all of us."

Those cheeks are filled to bursting!

Eventually, I abandoned the oasis to help make dinner. On the menu tonight were these.

Have you ever seen such a thing?

I thought they were some kind of exotic bean - they were delivered with our weekly "surprise box" of organic veggies. But as I topped and tailed them in preparation for steaming, I was greeted with a decidedly oniony-garlicky aroma. I stopped what I was doing and Googled images for "bean-like onion flavour."

Sure enough, this image popped up:

Source

Which led to a recipe for pistachio and "garlic scape" pesto. These greens are actually NOT beans (or alien pods); they are the sprouts from garlic bulbs and they are called scapes. Although the recipe describes them as having a mild flavour when raw, I found them a little too pungent, but sauteed a couple of them in butter and found them to be quite a delicious garnish for potatoes or for the Swiss chard I had steamed.

I am very glad I didn't try steaming them. Can't imagine that would have turned out well.

Seasons

Gee, looking down the recent posts, it seems I've been in a bit of a funk lately. I haven't, actually, though my heart has been stretched of late.

My prodigal daughter is on her way home. (Rejoice!) So today, I'm going to focus on gratitude. 

Our neighbourhood is a counterpane of beautiful colours, and our back yard seems to have confused its seasons.

This is from the planter I bought in June. Isn't this supposed to be a summer flower?

Gratitude: Renewal

The winter here's cold and bitter
It's chilled us to the bone
We haven't seen the sun for weeks  
~ Sarah McLachlan, "Full of Grace"

Spring is my favourite season. After the long, grey months of winter, I do a little happy dance when I see the flowers and buds. If you've read any of my blog for the past few months, this comes as no surprise.

The ornamental crab in our front yard.

But this year, for some reason, spring seems to have been particularly slow in coming. Maybe because I've been waiting so impatiently.

The theme for this April's Gratitude Journal was "renewal," and I've been looking for pictures that really show that. Looking at the other photos in the Flickr group, I've seen full-grown flowers and roses from other group members. Meanwhile, I've slipped into our garden every so often and snapped a pic, but none of them really looked truly awakened until I got back from my business trip this week.

While I was gone, Ottawa awoke.

I'm so happy finally to feel like spring is happening here.

What's your favourite season? Why?

Gol-darn it! They smashed our shrub!

This morning was not a good morning, as those of you who are my Facebook friends already know. Just before I left for work, I posted this status:

Morning is already off to a failing start. Daughter went out in the middle of the night. We're out of cat food. Mulch was delivered before I even had my coffee. Had to move SIL's car so it wouldn't be blocked by the mulch, but I couldn't reach the clutch pedal. (Good thing our driveway is on a slope; I just rolled it.) Truck driver ripped the side off our shrub. 

Here's what I left behind.

And that's just one close-up.

There's a chunk taken out at the base of the trunk.
(Does anyone happen to know what kind of bush this is?)

Poor little bird's nest!
I think it had been vacated, but still.

There was significant leaf destruction.

It's kind of ironic (I think ... Jeff? Am I using "ironic" correctly?) that, with all the trucks, loaders, wheelbarrows, tree-cutters and deliveries we had for the pool and back yard landscaping, not once did any of them harm this poor little bush, though I was braced for it. (They did damage some bricks at the back corner of the house, but they repaired it almost immediately.)

In the end, we got our humongous pile of mulch, which Katie will spread over the back garden over the next few days.

That is one shirtload of pine mulch.

I will call the company tomorrow and find out what they can do for our poor bush.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about why I couldn't reach the clutch of my sister-in-law's car, it's not that my legs are short, but that my SIL is tall, as is anyone else who regularly drives her car, so she hasn't had to move the seat forward in so long that the tracks have rusted. Seriously thick rust, from salt-sprinkled winter boots. So I had to scrunch down to depress the pedals, while peering over the steering wheel.

It was stupid and possibly dangerous. Emily sagely asked me why I didn't ask the truck driver to move the car for me. But given what he did to the shrub, I'm not sure it would have turned out any better.

And the missing daughter (who left a note, so I knew where she was) turned up before noon, and Peter picked up some cat food. So all's well. Sort of.

More and More Challenges

Remember when I mentioned the pool guy (a.k.a. "The Cable Guy" in this little rant)? Well, Derek finally did show up, but without calling first. He officially opened the pool while only my son, Peter, was present.

Peter is possibly the biggest-hearted person on the planet, the most well meaning and well-intentioned. He has memorized such useless things as Π to eleven digits. However, he routinely forgets to relay messages that may or may not be of a trivial nature.

So, ever since Derek's visit, I've been struggling to keep the pool from reverting to this.

The water is NOT supposed to be that green.

It has been an incessant struggle. I kept having to "shock" the pool with doses of chlorine powder.

On Saturday, I took a water sample in to the pool company. They informed me that there was zero chlorine in the water, which was a surprise since I had "shocked" it on Monday. They suggested I check the chlorinator settings.

So I did. This is what I saw.

On the left is the actual chlorinator.
The "mystery wire" was actually in a ziploc baggy.
The "mystery box" is the monitor
to which the mystery wire should have been connected.

The note, which we never saw, reads, "Leave OFF until Wednesday."
That would be Wednesday, June 15th, I think.
The yellow dot highlights the Off-Auto-Superchlorinate switch, set to "Off."

Which is when I discovered that the chlorinator had never been plugged in because its wire was still in the ziploc baggy, nor had it been turned on! We essentially had a saline pond in our back yard. Ick.

I sincerely hope that once we get it stabilized this time, it'll stay clean and clear for several weeks, rather than several days!

Meanwhile, I have tackled the rampant grass/weed problem, but have discovered other ravages of Mother Nature.

:-(
I hope it's just dehydrated, but it may have a fungus.

APHIDS on my dogwood.

This whole "creating an oasis" thing is not as straightforward as one might imagine. But, lest you think nothing is going according to plan, I leave you with this picture of the mother-of-thyme happily nestled between the rocks.

Just as planned.

Fighting a Losing Battle

Our backyard garden* is kind of like an aging starlet: from just the right angle, in just the right light, and with the rose-coloured lenses of wishful thinking, it looks quite lovely.

Lush, green gardens.

But, if you get closer, or change your perspective, the ravages of time and Mother Nature are more apparent.

Also lush and green, but not in a good way.

Before I left on my trip to Georgia, this patch was a little weedy, but not this bad! Ten days away and entropy** has taken over. In some of the garden areas, the weeds aren't too, too bad, but in others ...

I know where the "plant" is,
but I wouldn't trust my kids to know the difference.

I tried to do some damage control, but didn't really achieve much more than ruining my manicure (such as it is).

I'm trying - again - to grow my nails.
Gardening is not a good activity for that.

I really have to just get out there with a shovel and a hoe and get rid of the intruders once and for all, then put down some mulch before the weeds take hold again. I wish I could just have the fun part of gardening (the pretty trees, flowers and shrubs) and not have to worry about the work part of it.

---

* The "backyard" vs. "back yard" thing has been bugging me for a while, so I finally looked it up. Here is a concise explanation, which suddenly seems so obvious to me. I may have to go through all of my posts about the back yard and make corrections.

The thing itself is a two-word phrase: you grow vegetables in your back yard. The adjective form that describes the location of something behind your house is a single word: you have a backyard vegetable garden. - Source

** I have always defined entropy as "the tendency of things to revert to their most chaotic condition." Wikipedia has much more to say on the subject, which seriously undermined my confidence in my interpretation. My resident engineering physicist, however, assures me that I've got it right. Take that, Wikipedia!

Muddy Waters

Our pool construction was completed so late last fall (October!) that we didn't even turn on the pump or the heater. It would've cost a fortune to heat all that water and, frankly, when it's chilly and rainy out, who feels like swimming? Not I!

So we covered it with a big, blue tarp to keep the leaves and rain out, and we let it be. Come spring, we drained all the melted snow and ice off of the pool cover, and this is what we saw.

Steve dropped a brick onto the tarp in the deep end,
so that he could syphon off as much water as possible
before removing the cover.

It was still too cold to open the pool, so we focused on getting the terraces and gardens done. We're still plodding away at those. Finally, after a miserably rainy May, June brought some sunshine with it, so we pulled off the cover. This is what we were greeted with:

We accidentally spilled much of the contents of the cover
- including the brick - into the pool. Plus more leaves and pollen fell.
(The hose is topping up the water. It took HOURS.
Good thing we don't live in Barrhaven where there is a water ban in effect.)

There is so much dirt and algae in the water
that it is opaque in the deep end.

A visit to the pool company ($250) and two days of chemical blasting later, and the pool looked like this.

The algae are dead, but are suspended in the water, so it is
still so cloudy that you can't see the bottom, but at least it's not green.

A full series of chemical treatments - over the course of a week - and the water now looks like this:

Look: you can see the bottom (occluded by the reflection and still a little cloudy).
In fact, you can see the brick that fell off the protective tarp into the pool.

By the way, the water isn't actually blue; it only looks that way because of the blue liner and the reflection of the sky.

So far, it is not heated, but Emily has been in swimming. I'm still waiting for a sunny day when I happen to be in town. Then we need to clear all the work equipment off the patio so we can have a PARTY!

L'arbre au grand coeur

Have you read Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree? (It's called "L'arbre au grand coeur" in French, which translates roughly to "the big-hearted tree.") It's a heartwarming children's book about generosity and love. It was one of my favourites when I read bedtime stories.

As soon as I saw the tree across the street from our house, I thought of the Giving Tree. It is just so child-friendly. It made me happy.

Our backyard, however, was another matter. Do you remember this picture?

NOT feeling a lot of love here.
July 14, 2010

One of the surprises we've discovered as we've decimated this backyard, however is that we have our own Giving Tree! And it's playing hide-and-seek!

We'll have to put a big rock (or two) up there, so our grandchildren can play hide-and-seek with the tree.

Speaking of trees in our backyard ... I've also fallen in love with the "Fat Albert" spruce tree we planted. Its new growth is such a pretty blue-ish colour.

Does all this make me a tree-hugger? Maybe so.

Trees
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

(And I *just* learned that Joyce Kilmer was a man. How did I manage to go through school - including a degree in English literature - and not know this? I learn something new almost every time I write a blog post.)

Getting a Little Dirt Under My Fingernails

Remember our desolate backyard?

Well! We've been busy moving rocks and boulders, digging holes, planting stuff.

This is the detritus of planting more than 50 plants over the past two weekends.

And I am sore. My back hurts, my knees hurt, my hands and feet hurt.

My feet are just sad and dirty.
Think it's time for a pedicure.
(And I have renewed sympathy for elephants.)

 But, on the bright side, after all that work, here is what we are rewarded with.

And, as another sweet reward:

All in all, a good way to spend a late-spring day.

Suddenly, it's spring!

I went away for a few days (after days and days and WEEKS of rain) and when I came back, this - along with sunshine - is what greeted me:

Spring! 

Actually, those are what greeted me in the park

across the street from our house when I got home from work.
This is what first greeted me at the Ottawa airport:

I do love that waterfall.

---

In Ontario, this is a long weekend, Victoria Day weekend, in honour of Queen Victoria. (Also known as May 2-4 weekend, as in "a 2-4 of beer.")

She was not known as a real "party gal,"
but we do have a long weekend in her honour,
so I like her just fine.

Most Ontarians start working on their gardens this weekend. Before this date, at least in Ottawa, there is a very good chance that there will be a freeze (or snow, even), so if you plant before this, you do so at your own risk.

Given the desolate state of our landscaping, it won't surprise you that it was with much enthusiasm that Steve, Emily and I ventured to the gardening store, Artistic Landscapes and Designs. The plan was to buy more chicken rock. We did that, but also came home with several shrubs, including a magnolia! I've never owned a magnolia, but have wanted one ever since we lived in Alabama.

Our very own magnolia!

We also got a Japanese maple with feathery red leaves and a blue spruce, along with some dogwoods and a purple sandcherry, and a bearberry.

I worked in the backyard through the heat of the mid-day - and have the sunburn to prove it. [No fewer than three of my cousins have been diagnosed with skin cancer, so you'd think I would know better!] As the afternoon shade reached the patio, Steve and I sat down for some chips & salsa and Corona. Aaah.

After that bit of refreshment, I popped out front to survey our front yard. The neighbours all have well trimmed lawns and mature gardens. Our yard is ... how do I put it nicely ... naturalized. We have patches of wild violets and a large swath of lily of the valley and a mangy spattering of grass.

Ever since I was a little urchin with an ear-piercing soprano voice and sang, "White Coral Bells Upon a Slender Stalk," I have been enchanted with lily of the valley. It doesn't hurt that they appear as darling little cups in fairy tales.

Those little curls on the bottoms of the bells?
Exquisite.

I was afraid that we had destroyed these little gems, but they have come back abundantly, and I am glad. I won't show a picture of the whole yard; it's too embarrassing.

So, with my bank account drained and my back sprained, I shall relax for the rest of this weekend and enjoy our patio. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, do stop in for a beer.

Seeing Things

The snow is gone. The buds are pushing. Our pool is dredged, lined and filled. The city is bursting with colours - daffodils, tulips, and dandelions. And this is what our backyard looks like:

Our barren garden.

There is actually a blissful strip of greenery which Steve is watering - the ditch lilies we've transplanted from beside the house. But all in all, it's pretty depressing, isn't it?

Steve and I have been looking out our kitchen window at this sad stretch of dirt for the past many weeks months, partly with despair, partly with the feeling of potential. Always with a feeling of: this is work. And the quandary of where do we even start?

So last night, I opened this picture in PowerPoint and started pasting in pictures of all the things I would love to plant back there. This is what I came up with.

Like I said - this is Powerpoint, not Photoshop.
But you get the idea, right?

Just look! Lilacs, clematis, lilies, hollyhocks, sedum, hostas, phlox, snow-in-summer, cedar. Swoon.

Of course, the yard would never look like this because all of these things bloom at different times. But isn't it a completely different view? And even if I planted all of these plants this weekend, it would be five or ten years before it looked like this, but still it is so exciting to get a visual to strive for!

And that's just one corner of the yard! Here's more:

Different view of the same corner shown with Steve in it.

The "utility" corner, which needs a shed, a path and some plantings.

We don't have the time, energy or drive to plant this entire garden in one massive onslaught. Instead, Steve and the boys will continue to putter away at the terracing (easier to see in the first picture, if you click on it), and I will gradually do the planting, starting with the larger shrubs and a tree or two.

In the meantime, I am more than happy to receive any plants or cuttings that you are willing to share from your gardens. [Read: Oh, please? Do you have a hosta that is ready to split? A peony that needs to be divided? Some sedum to spare?]

Much as I hate Ottawa winters, I will admit that I LOVE Ottawa spring and summer - so lush, so green. Mmmmm.

P.S. We are now accepting bets on when we will open the pool for the season!