zucchini birthdays!

First of all, a happiest birthday to my sister. When you get home from your summer vacation journey, there will be a little something waiting for you. A little something that hopefully will remind you of our carefree pre-teen years. I will say no more!

As for the zucchini, let me say that I consider myself an above average speller. I love words. I am quite good at remembering how to spell accommodate, and all of the exceptions to "i after e except before c." But zucchini, that is a tough one. I have to admit that spell-checker usually catches and castigates me on that one. And how many other NPR dorks will remember the broadcast that taught them the difference between castigate and chastise!
Luckily it tastes much better than it spells. I came into some homegrown zucchini this afternoon (thanks, mona!). The most commonly held myth about zucchini: if you have extra, just make zucchini bread. Well, most recipes call for only one CUP of slivered squash. And if you have ever had a plant go wild you know that in the blink of an eye there is a greenish appendage as big as an adult's bicep. Your average "let's just make bread" squash is probably seven or eight cups worth. My gifted wild squash tonight did double duty as half-muffins half-dinner.

King Arthur Flour zucchini muffin recipe. No added sugar!

Which also brings me to tomorrow's bento lunch. On Sunday (when I had copious amounts of time) I smoked a fillet of salmon on a cedar plank. I tossed some of that with squash, and ate part of it for dinner and will have the other part for lunch tomorrow. I also added Ursula's last egg, because I am all about the protein. It was tasty!


Other bento highlights include my cottage cheese mix-up. I didn't want the whole thing to languish all night, so tomorrow I will toss my separately packaged cottage cheese (lower left, and you can tell how much I love fresh ground pepper) with a diced mixture of orange peppers, italian parseley (homegrown) and cherry tomatoes (deck tomatoes are not quite ripe yet. Or more precisely, they ripen one at a time which means that I eat them while standing on the deck). On the upper left side is a small container of organic nonfat yogurt with a nestled spoonful of homemade cherry jam. When you go to work at 8 am, you had better bring breakfast with you.

Sometimes I think that the eating is the best part of working.

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I let Penelope out of the coop today and kept Marge and Gladys inside. They need to learn that the coop is their safe place, and Penelope needed some fresh air, so to speak. At dusk, I opened the door and Penelope went inside to roost. A great sign that they have accepted one another! The three of them were tucked in for the night and no one was fighting. Their friendship has become just a little bit more beautiful.

Friend Update

The white hen is Marge, and the tan is Gladys. Kind of like those gruff diminutive waitresses you always encounter at truck stops. They would be happy to give your coffee a warm-up.

New Friends

mellow girls, just hanging out

I wasn't planning on getting banty hens. They are incredibly cute and sassy chickens, but I'm more a fan of the full sized hen. But Penelope kept making that noise, calling over and over again and it was so sad. I let her out of the coop yesterday and she patrolled the perimeter of the yard keening. Henrietta used to make the same sound. She and Ursula were inseparable, and when Ursula went to the coop to lay her afternoon egg, I'd know it because Hen would set up with her racket. It is kind of a low growly purr occasionally punctuated by a full-throated "bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk baKAAAAAWK!" Just imagine the volume ratcheting up until that last one is a triple-f fortissimo. Louder than any rooster. The longer they were separated, the more bawk bawk bawks there would be before the cathartic shriek at the end.

Penelope had never been alone for a second of her entire 5-month life. She was hatched in a bin of eggs, put in a cardboard box with hundreds of other hours-old chicks, mailed, and set up in a bin at the feed store with 50 other chicks. She came home with friends, joined our flock, and never was alone. I was amazed she was still eating, actually.

Godzilla-sized Penelope!
They will get bigger, but there will always be a size difference.

So operation: companion was launched. I couldn't go with baby chicks (though I had no idea Tranny Annie had reproduced! Congratulations!) because you can't integrate until they are several months old. I only found one listing at the feed store, written in the crabbed but perfect handwriting of an 85 year old woman. She lives out in Bothell, a rural area a bit out past us. The previous owners of her house had left behind chickens, and they were reproducing too quickly for her to handle. They just ran wild on her property with no coop or anything. She didn't really know anything about chickens, but treated them as pets all the same. Trouble was, they were banties and she didn't know to tell me that on the phone. Bantam chickens are about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of standard chickens. They lay diminutive eggs. Their tail feathers are usually held in! an! exclamation! point! I tend to cook with my eggs, so wanted to keep standard size hens.

I was already at her house, with my cat carrier, and there they were. A whole basement room of crazy running around banty chickens. Amazingly the hen must have hatched a clutch of 15 eggs, since they all looked like her (or the rooster) and were about three months old. Perfect age. I picked two and brought them home. They don't have names yet, since Charlie is at work and he is the Official Chicken Namer. The girls are amazingly docile and wickedly cute. There was a little squabbling in the coop at first, but I think that the three of them are going to get along just fine. In the spring I'll add in probably three new standard chickens and my flock will be perfect!

Museum of Flight

Charlie's dad, a pilot, is a great tour guide

While Charlie's parents were here we went to the Museum of Flight at the old Boeing field. Years ago, it consisted of an enormous hanger full of old planes. Packed with planes, really. Crammed from the floor to the rafters. Interesting, but you can only go walk around and look at just a plane sitting there so many times.

A couple of years ago they installed another entire wing (hehe) with a WWI/WWII theme. The difference between the two sections is amazing. The war wing is two floors, the top WWI and the bottom WWII. It is jam-packed with fun things to look at. For each real plane sitting there (and there are a *lot* of them) there's a display with a radio playing snippets of music or commercials from the time. Or perhaps a game where you try to match the tail symbol to the country of origin for the plane. There are old journals from fighter pilots, uniforms, medals, and a flatscreen display that lets you search for all of the ace pilots from that era. On the WWI floor there is a reconstructed bit of a trench line with all sorts of frankly horrifying tales of stinky feet and pictures of guys slogging through waist high mud. They do a great job of fascinating you with the history so that you end up actually retaining some of the information.

wait for the whites of their eyes!

And the planes, well, they are wonderful. You can get so much closer than at any airshow. I was actually quite surprised at how small they were. It's not like you could fit them in your garage, but after the passenger jets I usually fly in these fighter planes look impossibly delicate. The only trouble is that the light in there is great for a museum, but a little dark for good photos without the glaring flash. I'm sure that someone with a better camera and skillz could take some great pictures.

at christmastime with Gabe, Nick, Calliope, and dad

charlie only shows me the white from one eye, so I do not shoot.

Tasty bento

I am a big fan of only working 8 hours in a day, so I tend to eat lunch while working at my desk. It's also a good way to control what goes into my hungry belly since I can plan my lunch while in a calm state of mind (after eating dinner) and not be starving and fantasize about cupcakes and entire watermelons. By the time I'm at the ravenous stage, complete with cartoon cupcakes circling my head, I find myself stuck at my desk and only able to enjoy the nutritious lunch I so thoughtfully packed for myself the night before.

Enter: the bento. I've been a fan of bento box eating since I discovered sushi. It's most popular in Japan, where mothers vie for the title of most awesome lunch packed for their kid. The accessories alone are staggering....patterned cupcake cups of all sizes, little dividers shaped like animals, tiny squeeze bottles for sauces, even molds that you cook eggs in to create hard boiled cute piggy faces. Some people really go to the moon with this stuff. Much of my inspiration comes from this woman and the lunches she packs for herself, husband, and toddler each day. Hers are more traditionally asian, but yummy looking all the same.

I am mostly practical but admit I do have a drawer of little tidbits and have conversations with myself while packing, like, "should I use the little cup with the octopuses on it today? Or maybe one with penguins. And maybe some of that grass to keep the melon from touching the plum."

But, you know, it's all ok because I'm only packing these lunches to impress myself. It makes the bitter pill of no-cupcake-for-lunch easier to swallow if instead my hummus is tucked into a cup patterned with wee chicken heads. This is today's lunch (packed last night): part of a cut up hambuger from the previous night's dinner for my protein packed in a separate tiny tupperware, and in my bento box charlie's homemade hummus with red pepper and cherry tomatoes for dipping, and a treat of plum, cantaloupe, and cherries with a few pecans to cut the sweetness. Each portion is miniscule but they add up to be a filling satisfying lunch. For instance, that dollop of hummus is about a heaping tablespoon. The key is a colorful pleasing variety. I picked up a couple of traditional bento boxes at Daiso (the Japanese dollar store) and love their compartmentalized shape. The two levels nest neatly on top of one another.

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Things are a bit lonely in the coop. I may look into finding a companion hen for Penelope until another batch of babies comes next spring.

Penelope lives!

Penelope just came out of the woods and walked into the coop. She seems to be just fine and wasn't injured at all. Now let's see if James is out there somewhere too....

And then there were none.

I got up at 4.30am and took Charlie's parents to the airport. When I got home at 6.30am I let the girls and boy out and watched them run around a bit.

When I got home from work tonight nobody ran out to the car to greet me. I figured they were taking a siesta in the shade. I refilled the bucket of corn and walked around back to give them a treat, and saw the feathers.

I've positively identified piles of feathers from Ursula, Henrietta, and Sophie. Whatever killed them dragged them into the woods and left only feathers behind. I'll leave the coop open tonight and if Penelope and James are still alive maybe they'll come back. If I were them I'd be hiding in the woods and not coming out either.

Bye, girls. I'll miss you.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 0
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Let the Guitar Hero begin

We picked Charlie's parents up at the airport, had a scrumptious dinner at Italianissimo, and Charlie and his mom are already rocking out. The family that plays together.....has an awful lot of fun, that's for sure.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Roosters that crowed at 5 am and woke me up: 1

Lesbian Hen Enjoying Henhouse

Several years ago, I went for a day hike in a local park. While I was out my jeep had it's windows slashed and my wallet was stolen. It wasn't a horrible loss, but I did lose two important things:
1. My scuba certification, which included the infamous "Sarah's Huge Glasses" picture, which all of my friends still laugh about.
2. My tiny ripped out image from a 2001 issue of The Onion, entitled simply "Lesbian Hen Enjoying Henhouse."

Tonight when I got home from work the chickens were waiting. Charlie has been giving them some corn when he leaves for work, but the past few days haven't exactly been the all-corn-all-the-time manner to which they have become accustomed. So this evening, they were hungry. All five of them met me in the driveway. James was especially riled, all puffed out and strutting and Oh So Manly. I tossed out some corn.

James was trying so hard, really he was. He wanted that corn, but he also wanted all of the girls to look at him. Oh yeah, Henrietta was looking. She was watching to make sure that he wasn't getting any corn. Every time he tried to scoot in and grab some she would run him off. Truly, she would put her head down all snake-style and growl and rush him and James would do one of his patented "oh my goodness oh my GOODNESS!" acts and skitter sideways in submission.

A little later I was outside to do some mole killing, and James was crowing and crowing. And crowing. I watched him get all puffed up and inhale and flappity flap his wing feathers and start to crow....and Henrietta rushed him again. She would have none of it! She wanted her peace and her quiet and her happy land of hens. And when Henrietta gets cranky, James runs!

Hen power, my dear Henrietta. Hen power indeed.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Sometimes things get found

There have been an awful lot of lost cat and lost dog posters up lately. Perhaps it's summer roaming fever for the dogs. For the cats, I suspect it's coyotes and those cats have become dinner. Chalk that up as one of the many reasons our cats are indoor only! The posters for Hans are still up and have faded with the sun and a few rain showers.

But I saw a ray of hope the other day while getting our mail. Found: one cute little rabbit! I am amazed that our neighbors were able to catch him. He must be super friendly.

Back I go to cleaning the house. Charlie's parents arrive on Thursday afternoon! Last time they were here it was cold and dark and we had no power. This time will be more of a proper visit.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Back in the Saddle

Let me preface this by saying that I am absurdly lucky. Insanely, wonderfully, marvelously lucky. Two years ago last May Charlie and I were in the airport and we were talking about life and the future and he said, "so why don't you quit your job? It's ok." He was telling this to a woman that had worked nonstop since age 18. Worked for herself, worked to support a crappy ex-husband, worked to survive. I remember living in West Virginia and eating nothing but rice for months. I tried to hold off scurvy by sneaking glasses of orange juice at my job.

Let's just say that work was a part of the fabric of my life. And the work I was doing at the time of this airport conversation was, well, a little stressful. The other day my friend was trying to gently tell me what I was like during those Amazon days and it was something close to "crazy bitch." I knew I was not the most pleasant of people, but I kept bringing home the bacon because I expected that of myself. Responsibility incarnate.

So when Charlie said "why don't you quit" I did what came naturally. I burst into tears, and then I returned to work. And gave my two week notice. I only remember a surreal blur, but suddenly it was my last day and I was free. And for the past two years I've spent my time blissfully sewing, baking bread, making jam, painting walls, pressure washing and refinishing decks, remodeling bathrooms, and a million other thing. You know, Fun things!

And I confess, waiting for my new career to start. Every month I spit-and-shine up my resume and submit it for the job of "mom" and I get rejected. I've been waiting, and waiting, and in my spare time doing all of that bread and painting and landscaping.

Well, it's been a few years and I'm still waiting for that permanent job offer. A couple of weeks ago I pulled out my old admin resume and sent it out. Instant replies! To ease back into the world of working I picked a temp agency that would place me somewhere I would fit in (and have a short commute). This morning I started my 6 month temp placement at microsoft and it was natural and strange at the same time. I was pulled into a meeting upon arrival and heard people saying things like "action items" and "take this offline" and I almost laughed out loud. Oh, sweet sweet perspective.

For the next few months I'll be trading my lunches at the pancake house, dandling favorite babies on my knee, trips to flower world, and various home improvements for a paycheck. But I know how lucky I was to have my two-year vacation, and also know that if I really needed to I could go back to it tomorrow. So Charlie, thank you for the vacation. And my friends, thank you for making me see how sweet the time I spend with you really is (now that I have less of it!).

And to my fertility clinic, who obviously went with the auto-wording that came with their payment machine. Really, when printing my receipt you should maybe NOT point out that you want to see me again! :) I found this old receipt the other day and it made me laugh out loud.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 2
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Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 1
Eggs found in the woods Sunday: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 1
Eggs found in the woods Saturday: 0

Oh, James

As of Thursday morning at 10.30 am, James is officially a boy. There's been more than a little bit of doubt. When chicks are less than 24 hours old they are sexed by professionals and then shipped off to feed stores, but even the best chick sexer is only 80% accurate. There are some breeds that are sexually dimorphic (visually sex-able, in this case by color). But for every other breed you just hope that your sexer was able to do whatever fiddly thing they do to look in the baby chicken's vent and guess right. Other than that, you wait for secondary sex characteristics to appear, usually after a couple of months. In James' case the woman at the feed store thought he may be a boy because his day-old wing feathers were shorter than everyone else's. She's got way more chicken experience than I do, and she turned out to be right!

James has been slow to grow, and slow to develop really rooster-y feathers. He even had a backup name of Moneypenny in case he turned out to be a girl. In the last week however he's almost doubled in size and it's clear that he has the upright posture and curved tail feathers of a boy. Henrietta and Ursula remain clearly dominant in the flock pecking order, but James is busy herding his peers around.

Yesterday morning he crowed for the first time. Just one crow and none since. I am sure that the noise will get old after a while, but his first attempt was quite robust. Good tone, clear and low pitched. Didn't sound like a cracked-voiced high schooler at all! Once I manage to get a video of it I'll post that so you can all experience his masculinity.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Chickens scared by lots of thunder this morning: 5
Cats scared by thunder: 2
Humans who thought it was funny: 2

miscellany

The pants, when held up to the lad, appear to be waaaaay too big. With any luck, and judging from the zest with which he consumed a quesadilla today, they will fit eventually.

The dinner: oysters rockefeller. I followed the traditional recipe (spinach, bacon, anise liqueur, olive oil) and it was edible. Not terribly tasty. But very impressive looking! I more enjoyed the lettuce from my deck garden patch. I'm noticing that after eating each oyster I gain a little lump in my stomach that feels.....alive. Strange. Resistant to digestion. I know that when I shuck them they're still alive, and the reason they are so difficult to open is because they are desperately *trying* to remain closed. These also baked for 10 minutes in the oven so were overwhelmingly dead when I consumed them. But the strange knots remain. The lesson in this I think is that scavenging for my food is great, but in the future I should maybe avoid the oysters. Kristie had a better idea when she patronized the bbq guy in the next tent over. Mmmm brisket.

those limes in the background are for day three of the strawberry jam

I am digging paint out from under my fingernails. Over the past year I've repainted every single wall in this house except for the stairs and hallway in the basement. It's remained the same dingy off white that it was when we moved in. Quite filthy looking no matter how much I scrubbed it. This afternoon I cracked open yet another gallon of cotton whisper, the slightly off white color that occupies every non-fancy wall in our house. It's a great neutral that manages to seem warm when paired with bold colors (the orange wall in the guest bedroom) or pleasantly cool with others (the fern green wall in our bedroom). For some reason it looks a lot more beige in the swatch on my computer monitor, but in our house appears white. We used so much of it that at one point I bought a five-gallon bucket. It felt like an extravagance but was gone within weeks. I have two one-gallon pails left and hopefully that will stretch to cover what remains downstairs.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Chickens that crowed this morning at 10.30 am: James! He is a boy, after all!

Eat locally

Today was mind-meltingly hot. I mowed the lawn in the morning while it was only a mere 80 degrees out. Then I escaped to the air conditioned comfort of home depot where I purchased two gallons of paint (finally, the special Craft Room Blue!), three packages of mole death, and nine bags of dirt. Yesterday I worked on the last bit of driveway work that needs to get done: the conversion of the triangle of driveway now turned into a planting bed. Many hours of a woman and her pickaxe, sweaty and tired. I stripped the stubborn gravel out of the bed and today realized that Nine Bags of topsoil is not nearly enough. I will take the wheelbarrow out into the woods tomorrow and dig up more dirt to hopefully top things off.

The moles are totally out of control. Our backyard looks like a scene from Caddyshack. Soon I will start crafting small woodland creatures out of C4. Since we moved in, I have progressed from an all-natural hot pepper deterrent, to a buried buzzer thing that supposedly made the area too unpleasant to live in, and finally to The Gas. Yes, I know that it only makes the moles go away for a while and then new ones come, but at least it does *something.* None of my natural remedies made a whit of difference. So whenever I see a new freshly dug mound I tramp back there with my stick of death and my lighter and try to win one for the humans.

backyard section, june

backyard section, yesterday

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Late this afternoon I met up with Kristie and we went to the Duvall farmer's market. One booth had wonderful tiny local strawberries. They taste great but it's the smell that is almost overwhelming-- so purely strawberry-ish that it hovers on the cusp of being fake. My kitchen smells like Strawberry Shortcake-doll factory. As I was twisting the stems off they got a bit juicy and it was the consistency of nectar. Sticky sweet. They are now in the fridge macerating with sugar and lemon juice in preparation for jam making. Too hot to do that now!

The first part of my dinner came from a produce booth. One head of butter lettuce, tightly furled and just the size of my fist. I cut the bottom core off and put the whole thing in a bowl for a salad. The rest of my dinner was one of the joys of the farmer's market. The unexpected! There was a woman there with coolers of fresh oysters, caught yesterday in the Hood Canal and ridiculously cheap (though I had to buy a whole bag of 24, they were only 50 cents apiece!). On such a hot day a plate of icy cold and sweet fresh oysters sounded just perfect. I shucked sevenof them and mixed up some cocktail sauce and had an elegant dinner all by myself. There are still 17 oysters mumbling quietly in the refrigerator under a wet cloth. Oysters rockefeller tomorrow, perhaps?

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Serger love

Four spools are better;
My poor old sewing machine
Races to catch up.

I always find it so difficult to buy a significant piece of hardware. I do research, and fret, and do more research, and agonize over the inevitable conflicting opinions of reviewers. The internet is both a curse and a blessing in that you have access to a phenomenal amount of information but you must apply your own filter. Do you weigh the review of an unpaid unsolicited consumer the same as an obviously biased vendor opinion? One is more raw and honest, the other more informed. I keep cramming my head with more and more information. This doesn't even get me to the part where I wonder who will have the best price.

After a few weeks of research and no small amount of nail biting, I figured it out. The actual procurement process took a half hour. One moment: I had no serger of my own. I chatted a bit, handed over money, and suddenly was walking out of JoAnn's with a machine in my arms. It came with no carrying case and I looked remarkably like a looter. Charlie carried a little bag with the accessories and we made our break for it.


Last night I hooked it up and loaded in pink, orange, brown, and white thread. All the better to judge your tensions with, my dear! Sample pieces stitched up without me even having to adjust a thing. To celebrate I made a pair of pants for my favorite running boy. No pictures yet (too dark.... must wait for natural light) but they feature stretchy ankle cuffs and pockets that Run All The Way Down To The Bottom. Hopefully he will not look like m.c. hammer.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1 (Ursula is hiding hers, or taking a few days off)
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Eggs in the woods I am not looking forward to finding after our several-day heat wave: unknown

I heart Les Schwab

Charlie's car: fixed!

Pros for visiting Les Schwab:
- they've fixed two flats for me over the years and never charged me, whether I bought the tires there or not
- they've investigated several "my brakes make this strange noise" or "my tire makes a funny whirring sound when I drive" questions, sometimes taking a half hour to jack my car up on the lift to investigate, without ever charging me
- when I did need to replace my tires, they had the best deal I could find anywhere, even at costco
- they have never once given me that 'oh you're just a girl, you don't know anything about cars' attitude

Cons for visiting Les Schwab:
- every year they have a super bizarre "buy tires get free meat" thing where they give out steaks.

So yeah, I have a little soft spot for them. Getting a flat tire or having your brakes squeal alarmingly is never fun (and often quite scary) and I never stress about getting it fixed. I have many cooking and sewing tips, but for a change this is my best car tip.

Best flat tire Ever

Charlie and Jeff have great gams, don't you think?

If you're going to get one, I recommend it go something like this:

- Go see a great movie.
- Eat loads of tasty italian food.
- Drive home on a warm summer rain-free night.
- Arrive at your flat driveway as the sun is setting, get out of the car, and hear a strange hiss.
- Have your car be the kind that has a full-sized spare tire.


While Charlie works today, I'll be taking his car to the shop to have them patch the tire. It's obvious what did the deed--- there is a huge hunk of metal sticking out of it. My theory is that it's one of the metal bolts traffic people use to nail-gun down those rubberized car counting strips that you occasionally bump over. Or maybe it was a malicious robot laying caltrops. We will never know.


The great movie? Ratatouille. I have never met a Pixar film I didn't like but this one was exceptional. Perhaps it's because I love food so much. Pixar's attention to detail is unbelievable. The main female chef character had a burn mark on the inside of her wrist in the same exact place that I get one whenever I am doing a lot of cooking with big soup pots. Those rats spend a lot of time in various degrees of dampness (they are rats, after all) and oh sweet nellie they are beautiful. Gorgeous. Each strand of fur on their bodies looks like it answered a casting call for Perfect Fur. The antagonist (food critic Anton Eg0) must have had twenty people working on his character design. Even his typewriter is fantastic.

The heavy hand of disney was visible in some places but thankfully there were no rat-colony musical numbers.

I don't even *like* ratatouille to eat but now I want to make some. I need to find something that has a ridiculous amount of prep because I'm in the mood for chopping and dicing and fussing with spices.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Sunday: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Saturday: 0

Dress, reverse-engineered

the original dress

I saw this lovely dress at pottery barn kids the other day. I'm always on the lookout for good kid clothing patterns, and this dress was exactly the kind of simple shift I have been seeking. The floating lining inside gives it a really finished look. Time to reverse-engineer it! I really didn't want to rip the thing apart and thankfully was able to figure out mostly what they had done by turning it this way and that, over and over. The seams of the dress are obvious, so making the pattern is just a matter of tracing each piece and then giving a seam allowance (I like 1/2"). The hardest part is sussing out in what order the pieces are assembled. There is one tricky bit where I end up having to hand-sew the shoulder seams because for the life of me I cannot figure out how they did it with a machine. Again, borrowing the serger made the difference. The seams just look so professional.


My first copy of the dress was for Mona, who is expecting her little girl in the fall. She got to pick out the fabric and the buttons. I approve of the snazzy contrast!



The second copy is for Calliope. The fabric is from a sun-dress I bought at t j max for $10. One of my secrets: if you see a piece of clothing that has super awesome fabric, just get the biggest size you can find and then cut it apart and use the fabric for other things. A hideous velvet skirt can cost only a few dollars at goodwill, and you can never ever find velvet by the yard that cheap. Another favorite is old bedsheets. Once they make it to the goodwill they have been washed hundreds of times. Good old fashioned cotton sheets get a fantastic smooth cool feel after many washes. In neutral colors they make perfect linings.


I consider this pattern a success! The original dress was sized 12-18 months. I need to do a little research and hopefully will learn the scaling ratios used for children's clothing so that I can make different sizes.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

bricklayer

A couple of months ago Charlie and I had the great idea to edge part of the driveway with bricks. When the driveway was gravel, it blended in with the planting beds just fine. Having it paved created a very crisp line where the driveway edges are. Suddenly the transition from asphalt to mulch looked, well, messy. Plus the chickens have a habit of scratching around and flinging dirt in search of bugs. When Mom was here last summer she lined the outer edge of the driveway with fist-sized rocks she scavenged from our yard. It looks fantastic, but we had run out of a ready supply of rocks.We figured that a subtle natural looking edging of bricks would solve both the transition and the dirt-flinging.

you can see the line of mom's rocks in the background

Charlie helped with the first portion next to the house. We laid a straight line from the edge of the porch. We reclaimed a little triangular bit of driveway to be used as an extension of the garden bed. The straight line of bricks just looked so much better. That task still remains: to dig out the old gravel and put in a bit of dirt. Charlie even picked out a little japanese maple to plant once it's complete.


I did about a quarter of the main circle a week or so ago and then kept putting it off. Mona came over the other day and inspired me to get moving, and with her help we got the entire thing done in one day. Now I just have to order a truck load of mulch to make it look lovely.

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Since the chickens have been pretty lax about laying eggs in the coop, I had to buy some eggs for breakfast. This morning I had one of Henrietta's eggs and one from the store. The difference in appearance was amazing! When you have store eggs on their own they don't look bad at all. But put next to a fresh egg from a chicken that eats tons of greens and corn the store eggs look positively anemic.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Not for the skittish

You know those large-ish road message signs? The kinds that can be programmed to say various things like "right lane closed ahead" or "parade next Tuesday." There have been a few set up around town for the past week and they all say" Firework Illegal In City Limits." There must be some sort of letter limit, since Firework has always been singular.

At any rate, we do not live in the city limits. Starting around 4pm today our neighbors have gone bang crazy. It's been sounding like the revolutionary war. Right now it's 11.30pm and there are still pops and bangs and sizzles in the distance. Nothing says "I live in the country" like holiday-inspired munitions! Henry tried to sit on my lap during the movie but kept a wary ear cocked for each explosion outside and never quite relaxed.

Charlie came home from work at a civilized time this evening and we made a lovely salad and then watched a movie. When I first lived in Seattle my apartment was down on puget sound and the fourth of july was Amazing. One memorable summer the Blue Angels actually flew Right Over My Balcony. I have a photo somewhere of the plane's underbellies, writing on them crisp and clear because they were so very close. Seattlelites take their fireworks very seriously. The shows are lengthy, choreographed to music, and extravagant. Several shows compete. There are some vantage points in town where you can watch multiple shows at the same time. But now? For as much as I love fireworks, the logistics are excruciating. You and tens of thousands of your neighbors are competing for parking spots, picnic spots, even public transportation. It's a total nightmare. So our fourths now are pretty mellow. See: salad and a movie.

The movie: Blazing Saddles. I had never seen it, and it was.....unlike any movie ever. Gene Wilder is tops in my book.

The salad: from the July issue of Gourmet magazine.

Dressing:
1/4 c rice vinegar
2 t dijon mustard
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 t sugar
1/3 c olive oil

Salad:
1 lb green beans
1 lb tiny potatoes
2 cans tuna, drained
12 oz cherry tomatoes
1/2 c kalamata olives
3 T capers
1/2 c flat leafed parsley
4 hard boiled eggs

Make dressing: whisk together vinegar, mustard, garlic, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in oil in a slow stream to emulsify.

Make salad: Cook beans in a pot of water until tender, transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking, drain, and pat dry. Add whole potatoes to boiling water and simmer until tender. When still warm, cut into bite sized pieces. Flake tuna and toss with 1 T dressing. Toss potatoes and beans with tomatoes, olives, capers, parsley, and remaining dressing. Season with more salt and pepper and top with tuna and eggs.

An excellent meal for a warm summer night. Briny, salty, and mouth puckering. I think it can be adapted to any wild array of ingredients. Left over grilled salmon instead of tuna, perhaps some fresh corn. With a base of the tasty dressing and cooked baby potatoes you could go in almost any direction.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 0
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Chickens cursed for waking me up at 7am by cackling and yelling to be let out: 5

What sound does the choo choo make?

Optical illusion: two baby hands on two mother laps.

Today was a sunny Seattle stunner of a summer day. Say that five times fast! I joined Maggi, Elisa, and the boys at Remlinger Farms for some frolic. A petting barn with The World's Friendliest Goats? Check! Baby chickens? Check! Soulful-eyed sheep? Of course! Mediterranean Donkeys? Why not! We went there last year and they obviously were doing construction but it wasn't clear on what. Boy howdy have they fixed that place up. There's a little amusement park now, with a teacup ride. A tiny roller coaster. A water ride with wee canoes. We determined that it was great to have a summer birthday, because they have open-walled rooms set up for parties next to the petting barn.

The old fashioned steam train (dad, I am sure, will know the exact scale of the model) is still there and it putt putts through the woods and around exotic animal pens. The llamas were most entertaining as they loped across their pasture. Obviously they had been grazing next to the tracks and were none too entertained by the noisy visitor. The emus were unmoved, as were the donkeys. I pet a goat that had a big bushy beard and the most impressive set of goaty-manhood I've ever seen dangling.

And what is awesome? Awesome is a huge trampoline embedded in the floor of a shade-house, and then covered with about 8 inches of straw. If there had been no kids around I would have been *flying* on that thing.

not jumping, but keeping his balance just fine

On the way out I picked up a full flat (12 half-pints) of raspberries from their fields next door and made some raspberry-rum jelly. I am not a big fan of raspberry seeds but am usually too lazy to go through the extra step of slightly cooking the berries then smushing them through a fine sieve to painstakingly extract every drop of juice. You also have to use more fruit. For the same reason raspberry seeds are annoying (they are large) they also make up a lot of the volume of jam. Typically one recipe of jam takes 6 half-pints of raspberries. Tonight I reduced 9 half-pints down into four cups of juice. It ended up making 5 half-pints of jelly. But oh is it ever tasty. I used the fancy super dark rum that Charlie's friend brought back from Cayman.

new egg carton label, for eggs given to friends. I always like to know where my eggs are coming from!

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2 (Ursula laid a huge one!)
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

astounding mobility

I always have my camera in my bag because of moments like this. Last week I was creeping down a main thoroughfare in afternoon traffic and saw a strange van with big windows on the side. There were no company logos or markings anywhere. I passed it once and thought I saw people in the back of the van sitting in chairs with computers. Perhaps some sort of strange police traffic control vehicle? Google map charting? I had seen some pictures of the new street-level mapping and those vans had a lot more cameras in them.

After another pass I realized that there *were* people in chairs....wheelchairs. They looked like heavy duty rigs for people with degenerative diseases like ALS, with the head supports and stuff and tilted flatscreens up at eye level. This was their Super Awesome transport! It was obviously a modded delivery van, and they had added those big windows to the side but loaded and unloaded from the back like a typical truck.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Saturday: 0