The bright side

 Happy Easter!

 Here's some good advice for us all on this holiday morning.

The 2025 garden

The vegetable garden is finally all planted! This year I have more things planted in it than ever before, and it's a combination of the older raised bed, a new raised bed, and several containers, including a small plastic kiddie pool where I'm growing Bibb lettuce and baby carrots. As an experiment, we're even growing a little bit of corn! Gregg's been pestering me to try growing corn for a while now, ever since he found out a friend of his grows a few small patches of it in his backyard garden and has success. After homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn is his favorite summer garden treat. When we saw some 6-packs of corn seedlings ("Peaches and Cream" variety) at Lowe's the other day, I thought what the heck. They were $5.99 and Gregg was excited by the idea. Since it was an impulse buy we hadn't planned where to put it, though. Our solution made me laugh: we used the large empty spaces on either side of my new rose! *

Anyway, here's the list of what's growing in my garden this year:

Tomatoes:

Nine heirlooms started from seed: 3 Eva Purple Ball, 3 Hillbilly Potato Leaf, 2 Berkeley Tie Dye, 1 Mexico Midget Cherry.

Five hybrid determinates bought as seedlings: 1 Heatmaster, 2 Bush Goliath, 1 Better Bush, 1 Roma.

Peppers:

One each of Serrano, Jalapeno, Mammoth Jalapeno, Tabasco, Cowhorn, Giant Marconi, and Sheepnose Pimento.

Cucumbers: two Boston Pickling and one Armenian, all planted in large containers.  

Also:

Rattlesnake beans (thanks Mary!), Yellow Crookneck squash, Aunt Mae's Bibb lettuce, and Paris Market carrots. Peaches and Cream corn. 

I mixed together three different varieties/packets of marigold seeds and planted them down the center of the two raised beds to go along with the Marietta marigolds that have reseeded themselves from last year. I like using a living mulch of marigolds around my tomatoes to deter pests and attract pollinators. I've got parsley and basil started from seed that's close to ready to put in the ground, too. 

Here's a few pictures of the garden along with a chart I drew to keep the placement of everything straight. 

* We made a bed for Eustacia Vye that will be big enough to accommodate her plus two more English shrub roses next year. I haven't even seen the first flower yet and I'm already obsessing over what the next two roses will be. I can see how the madness begins!

She's leafing out! 

Three years!

Three years ago today, we brought this little girl home:

She was so little!

It's hard to believe it's been three years!! Poppy's grown into a sweet, good dog. She's a little bit stubborn and sassy, but I like that in a dog. We all love her so much!

Happy Gotcha Day, SweetPop!

Spring crud

A few days ago, I started sneezing at work over and over again. Although I'm not allergic to most spring pollen (with the exception of grass) I decided it was probably my allergies acting up, even though they've been well under control for a while now thanks to allergy shots. Well, I woke up the next morning feeling terrible, with a runny nose, cough, and body aches. I've since decided that I've caught either a cold or a mild version of Covid. Ugh!

Thursday and Friday at work were rough. I felt awful and just wanted to come home and lie down, and the hours seemed to drag. I would have used some sick time, but last week was crunch time as far as closing out this year's federal and state budget with a Friday afternoon deadline to get everything done. There was also a Friday night event at the school that I was taking payments for up until the last minute, so I just didn't feel like I could justify staying home for just a cold. When it was finally time to leave yesterday afternoon, it was a huge relief. Hopefully I'll be back up to par by the time Monday morning rolls around.

And what is it about warm weather that makes a cold feel ten times worse? At least it's still a bit chilly here at night, because nothing is more miserable than a summer cold when it's 90 degrees outside and humid. Just mild springtime mid-day warmth is unpleasant at the moment. 

I really wanted to spend the weekend working in the garden, but I just don't feel up to it at all. At least it's early enough in the season that nothing is terribly pressing at the moment. 

A few spring photos

Spring is rushing by, and I realized the other day that I haven't shared any pictures of it with you. Here are some pretty things that have been growing and blooming in my world over the past few weeks:

Isn't that beautiful? Our young crabapple tree has shot up to over 7' tall and two weeks ago it was covered with these pink flowers. 

Speaking of beautiful..

Two borage plants from last summer started growing back late in the winter. I moved them from the zinnia bed over to the corners of the new raised bed. They've since burst into bloom, and I just love the color! 

Next, some neighborhood photos with the wisteria and azaleas blooming. I just love this time of year.

Eustacia

Several weeks ago, my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday. He said it ought to be something special, because 50 is a milestone. We talked it over, and he suggested it might be time to start planting the roses I've been dreaming of growing for a long, long time. Years ago, before we were even close to being able to buy a house, I signed up to receive David Austin English rose catalogs. Every time I got one, I'd spend hours poring over it and hoping one day I'd be able to place an order. 

Well, now we have a home of our own, and a garden, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate turning 50! 

The initial plan was to order three roses, because that's how many we have room for in the spot I picked, but after giving it some thought, I decided it would be better to start with one and then later (maybe next year) add two more. That will give me the opportunity to focus all my attention on my "birthday" rose, since this is new gardening territory for me.

It took two weeks, but I finally picked the variety I wanted and placed my order. That was on Tuesday of last week, and on Friday my rose arrived! When I got home from work Gregg had already prepared the bed by digging up and moving the banana plants that were in the spot--hard work, and I was so happy he got it done for me! The next day, Saturday, we were able to plant.

Behold my newest "pet"...a bare root shrub rose called "Eustacia Vye":

It doesn't look like much now, but I have high hopes!

Birthday weekend

The Saturday morning before my birthday, while I was in the midst of finally finishing my cake, I got texts from two of the three friends who were invited over that night. Both had last minute emergencies and weren't going to be able to make it to the party.

At this point I'd already made and purchased a lot of food and drinks and alcohol and I knew I was going to have way, way too much. Marla was the only friend I'd invited in advance who was able to come, and the neighbors I'd planned to text that afternoon weren't home. 

I was disappointed, but of course I understood. Martina and her husband had a friend in crisis and needed help finding temporary housing for his dogs, and Meisha had a family issue come up. And since I hadn't mentioned anything to the neighbors ahead of time, they had no way of knowing I was going to text them to walk over for cake that night. 

It was still a nice time anyway, even though it was just me and Marla. I set out small dishes of the food I'd prepared, made a small pitcher of champagne punch, plugged in the string lights on the porch, and we spent a few hours eating and drinking and talking. 

The next morning, Martina texted me and asked if she could stop by that afternoon. She felt about about missing the night before and wanted to bring a gift she'd gotten me. Of course, I said yes, and that afternoon we had another small "party" with more small plates of food and plenty of cake. I didn't make punch this time, but we did have a selection of hard apple ciders. 

That afternoon, my phone rang and I saw it was my nephew, which seemed odd. When I answered, he said, "Hold on a second!" and then him, his mom (my sister in law) and his wife Jessica all sang "Happy Birthday"! Even one of their dogs joined in by barking while they sang! It was so sweet! 

I got serenaded again later that day. Two of my favorite little kids (siblings) at the school have a sweet mom who saw on Facebook that it was my birthday, so she recorded them singing Happy Birthday to me and telling me that they love me, and posted it on my Facebook page! (Those of you that I'm FB friends with can go check it out if you're interested). That made me so happy!

Then on Wednesday, not-so-little P. and his mom met me at our favorite Mexican place for dinner to celebrate our birthdays...since P. and I are birthday twins. He's 12 years old now and growing up fast. It was really good to spend some time with them and they gave me a card in which they had written, "Friendship is a treasure, but you're more than a friend. You're family." That made me cry. 

All in all, it was a good birthday, even though it was nothing like I'd planned!

Back later today when I show you my gift from Gregg. :)

The short version

I've been trying to write a post about my frustrating experience with baking myself a birthday cake last week. When I told one of my friends about it, she laughed until tears ran down her face. Granted, we'd had a few drinks, but it really was funny as I told the story.  

When I tried to write about it, though, I couldn't get it to work and convey the humor of the situation, so here's the short version: I got way overambitious and attempted to make a huge chocolate cake with homemade buttercream. I also wanted to decorate it, despite never having any practice at that. I ordered a cake decorating kit with lots of bags and tips, watched a few Youtube videos, and gave it my best shot. I baked the cake on Thursday evening and left it to cool overnight, and then on Friday I started making buttercream and attempting to pipe borders and simple flowers.  

What a nightmare! Turns out buttercream is hard--not hard to make, but hard to get the consistency right. I did a thick layer of chocolate buttercream first, and it looked awful. Just awful. So then I made a huge batch of vanilla buttercream and made two more attempts to cover over my bad work...and it kept getting worse! Finally after three or four hours, and a trashed kitchen, I gave up for the day. I was disgusted with the whole thing and ready to dump the mess in the trash!

The next morning, Saturday, I knew I had to do something. The party was that night, and the cake was a wreck. So in desperation I went to the grocery store and bought two cans of Betty Crocker chocolate icing which I slathered liberally all over the mess, smoothed it out, dumped a bunch of sprinkles all over the top, and called it a day. And then I said to myself, "What the hell was I thinking?" and also, "Never again."

Two days of stress and effort, in pictures (and layers of crappy buttercream):

Next: the first two big blobs of cheap canned frosting I slapped on top of the wreckage made me laugh hysterically, and I had to take a picture. This summed up all my planning and effort perfectly.

GEORGIE WUZ HERE! 

Okay, but to be serious, the cake actually turned out to be...presentable. And tasty. You can't really tell from this picture, but it was huge and weighed a ton. Especially with two layers of homemade buttercream smothered in Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge icing and Sprinkles.