Busy as a bee

Seriously. We saw our first bee of the season in the garden last weekend, and since so few flowers are in bloom right now, it was indeed busy.

The last three weekends have provided enough glimpses of springlike weather (with a strange, glowing orb in the sky and temperatures above bone-chilling) that I pronounce that the 2008 gardening season has officially begun in our small homestead. J and I took a trip to a specialty nursery that stocks more varieties of rhododendrons than most people can imagine. It is a dangerous, dangerous place (it would have been more dangerous if we realized at the time that many, many varieties of Japanese maples were also to be had).

We had planned on buying only a few small rhodies (by small I mean those that max out at about 1’ x 1’ or 2’ x 2’) as evergreen anchor plants in a still-empty bed in the middle of our front yard. Well…we came home with 10. For anyone out there who things rhodies are simply big-leaved foundation shrubs (especially ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest), the diversity in just those few plants we adopted is astounding. Big leaves, tiny leaves (1” by 1/8”), round paddle-shaped leaves, narrow pointy leaves. Flowers in shades of lemon yellow, sky blue, violet, deep red, cream, white, cotton candy pink and pink fading into white. Lovely. The largest of these will reach 3’ x 3’ over many, many years.

In case you don’t think miracles exist, we arrived home with our plant bounty and immediately put ALL OF THEM into the ground. Unheard of! We also moved three plants to the front yard from their temporary resting places (a Viburnum, a small false cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Snow’) and a small variegated-leaved evergreen shrub whose name I can’t recall...)

It’s amazing how a few hours work can transform a landscape. Especially when the rest of our front yard already has young shrubs and trees in place, along with a lovely-even-in-winter herb border, foxgloves that never figured out it was winter, a winter vegetable patch (mostly kale, chard and beets) and masses of emerging spring bulbs.

My ambitiousness extended to planting four bags of bareroot perennials from Costco, including bleeding heart (Dicentra), maidenhair and cinnamon ferns, trillium and about 20 assorted hostas. I plugged a dozen of the hostas around the rhodies, for a nice contrast of leaf size and shape. I’ll add some deep purple columbine later, along with three hellebores I picked up at Costco last night (I also picked up a bag of 12 variegated-leaf hostas [after swearing up, down and sideways to J that I had actual spots for them] and a flowering pear tree that has a narrow enough mature width for our fenced side yard.).

A lovely line of coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea)will flow on the street side of the rhody bed, once we pick them up from a conservation district native plant sale next week.

Indoors, most of my tomato seeds have sprouted (except for holdout Koralik...not sure what it's waiting for) and I hope to see action from my pepper and eggplant seeds any day now. With grow lights glowing from the basement 24-7, I'm sure our neighbors must think we're growing pot. Heh, heh.

Gratuitous dog photo

Yep, this is my golden retriever. Photo taken Sunday, when he was getting in my way as I was trying to take garden photos. He clearly believed that I was only out on the patio to see him and photograph his gorgeousness. Self-centered beast.

I meant to post more tonight, but I have to go watch Lost. Will fulfill intentions tomorrow, for I have many secrets to tell...

(Old-)fashion(ed) obession

Last night J and I watched Sweet Land (excellent, I highly recommend) and this morning I watched the rest of Northanger Abbey off Tivo while I drank my coffee. These two viewings unexpectedly spawned a burning desire to adopt some of the fashions of decades long past.

In Sweet Land, I fell head over heels with young Inge's traveling outfit of circa 1920 deep purple above-ankle-length (wool?) gored skirt and fitted black puff-sleeved jacket. I drooled over her black brimmed hat with the purple and black polka-dotted scarf tied around it. If you want to see the outfit in all its glory, visit the movie's clips page and watch Clip 2. Sigh.

I think the skirt from Folkwear pattern 232 will do nicely. The jacket may be more problematic. But where there's a will, there's a way!

I always yearn for Regency-era fashion a bit whenever I watch a Jane Austen movie, but that familiar pull was especially acute as I watched Northanger Abbey. I particularly fancied the jackets, especially the cute little Spencer jacket in light blue velvet. Fortunately this recreation will be a bit easier, thanks to this pattern from (the aptly named) Sense and Sensibility. For Jane-worthy gowns, I like their "The Lady's Elegant Closet" pattern, as well as Folkwear pattern 215.

An accidental obsession occurred while looking for the Spencer jacket pattern. I stumbled over a little selection of patterns collectively called "Women of the Middle Bustle Era: 1877-1882." I'm especially fond of the elaborately draped skirts that don't actually require a bustle.

Sigh, I think I'm in love.

Thrifty genes

I’ve inherited many traits from my mother. My eye and hair colors. My body type. My extreme nearsightedness (we’re talking blind as a bat, people). My tendency to talk with my hands. And, last but not least, my love of thrift store shopping.

I can’t pinpoint my first thrift store experience, but since my mother and her mother thrifted before I can remember (and probably long before I was born), it was with undoubtedly by the side of one or the other (if not both).

I do have distinct grade-school memories of visiting my grandmother’s home in the San Francisco Bay Area and walking to nearby thrift stores, and taking BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to others. I was always thrilled with my clothing finds, because even at that age, I liked that I had something that no other kid in my class would have.

(Come to think of it, my grandfather was a thrifter, too. About five years ago, my grandmother gave me a partial set of Mikasa china. I finally asked her about its provenance last fall. It turns out my grandfather [who died when I as a child] had pieced together that incomplete collection from thrift stores! Of course, at the time my grandmother was all, “Why do we need more china?”)

Through the years, I continued to thrift store shop with Mom and Grandmother, then with friends in high school and college. One of my first jobs out of college, as a poorly paid reporter at a weekly newspaper in a small western Oregon town, was luckily within two blocks of a decent Goodwill. My editor (a friend who graduated a year ahead of me) and I knew exactly when new shipments came in, and made sure to take a break to hit the racks, unless news was breaking (ha!). One of my best finds was an Anne Klein double breasted suit jacket, which I wore for years.

Then I moved to the Midwest, followed by two years in New Jersey, and I abandoned thrifting altogether (and I was an hour from NYC…what was I thinking?!).

When I took up bellydance with a vengeance four years ago, I started making occasional forays into a Goodwill here, a Value Village there, to look for velvet tops and long, full skirts suitable for class or costuming.

My official return to thrifting was the day after Thanksgiving last year. J had to work; I did not. I was able to go to Goodwill by myself (we use our car very little and tend to group our errands, so he was always with me on previous trips) with the time and space to roam the racks and sift the wheat from the chaff. You know how you can not see a good friend for what feels like forever, and then take up exactly where you left off. Yep, me and thrifting.

My friend Goodwill was especially good to me on my one appointed January thrifting trip (in accordance with my Wardrobe Refashion pledge). For $80 and change (including tax) I got 22 items of clothing:

• Three cute cardigans (pink cotton, red cotton, charcoal merino wool)
• Three hoodies (red velour, olive velour, charcoal knit)
• Two pink striped shirts (Eddie Bauer and American Eagle)
• Green washable suede jacket
• Green Gap zip-front short raincoat
• Summery hip-length, ¾-sleeve jacket in shades of blue and green
• Cozy nubby fleece jacket
• Black ribbed merino wool turtleneck
• Deep red nubby wool Eddie Bauer sweater set
• Striped I.N.C sweater
• Olive green rib-knit V-neck sweater
• Blue cropped sweater perfect for bellydance class
• Crazy striped sweater with bell sleeves
• Burgundy long-sleeved Ann Taylor crew-neck T
• Lime green ribbed boat-neck T
• White button-down shirt with stripes of black stitching
• Red/black brocade button-front vest

Items in italics were a mere 99 cents each (red tags). The others were 30 percent off of their tagged price (blue and green tags). Bold items need some refashioning (just new buttons in one case). I have my February trip planned for the big President's Day sale, when Goodwill has the same 99 cent/30 percent off arrangement going. Good times!

Pix of a few items are on my Flickr page. I'll include one or two in this post later...