KonMari and Little Free Libraries

Let me tell you a little story about how KonMari stole my summer vacation. If you are asking yourself, "What is KonMari?" you might want to check out this good summary of Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

Now that everyone is up to speed on Kondo and her KonMari method, let me first say that I had not expected this book to resonate so much with me. I don't have a cluttered house (I do have areas that are disorganized but most of my house is on the minimal side). I am not a collector of things. I already had a habit of editing and purging my belongings once or twice a year. But, man oh man, did this book come at me in the right way at the right time.

Let me set the scene for the madness that happened: I heard about the book, had my interest piqued and added my name to the very long waiting list at the public library. After being on the waiting list for long enough that I had forgotten the book existed, I got the email that the book was waiting for me. It just so happened that I got this book right before a scheduled staycation in July. Paul was going out of town on a trip and I had planned to use a week of vacation time to do a cosmetic makeover of our front porch as well as soak up the summer with bike rides, beach time and hiking with Uli. That was not what happened.

I read the book and thought, "Hmm. I should apply this method to my house gradually because surely there are things that I have that I don't need." And then, in the days leading up to my vacation, I started sorting through things. When cleaning and organizing areas of my house, I used to ask myself, "Should I get rid of this? Is it ever going to be useful to me? Would I miss it if I didn't have it anymore?" But, at Kondo's suggestion, this time I sorted by category and asked, "Does this spark joy? Do I have a really good reason to keep this? Is this useful to me right now?" The slight flip of my screening questions along with tackling stuff by category instead of by area helped me see that I was unnecessarily holding on to tons of things.

This dabbling took on great momentum and ended up consuming my vacation week. I dove deep, deep into it and touched nearly everything in my house that is exclusively mine (Paul's stuff and our shared possessions were off limits since he was out of town). It also spiraled off into addressing projects that would make my house more "finished" like better lighting in one room, a rug in another, hanging curtain rods and curtains, shuffling around furniture and a list of finishing touches to be addressed in the future. 

To really get fully immersed and honest in this experience, I went completely offline for a week and worked on this project from sunrise to sunset for 5 full days. It was intense and super satisfying! My sense of what could go and what needed to stay got pretty well honed by the end. It was a far more therapeutic experience than might seem on the surface. In order to make your decisions, you really have to face who you were, who you are and the uncertainty of who you will become. 

I also realized as I was in the midst of this project, that I could not have done this earlier in my life as this was an extremely privileged activity. I think that I needed to reach a place of stability in my life where I could calm myself with the thought that in the unlikely even that I regretted letting go of something, I had the resources to get it again. It is a privilege thing to have too much stuff and it is also a privilege to live minimally with the notion of a financial safety net large enough to not feel like you will ever have to go without if you really want something. Holding on to things "just in case" is an understandable thing to do when you don't have a lot of resources. I experienced a lot of gratitude for being in a position of faith in future abundance, if needed.

In addition to the unaddressed privilege in her method, I also feel the KonMari method is lacking when it comes to how you are instructed to get rid of your things. She does not have environmental sustainability in mind when it comes to disposing of those items that don't pass the test. I realize it is more work to find ways to donate and recycle your unwanted possessions and that the extra work might be a barrier to some, but it is the responsible thing to do. 

Kondo does mention asking others in your life if there is anything that they have been wanting that they are considering buying for themselves. If you are getting rid of that thing, you are encouraged to give it to them. And, in the long run, living by her method will mean you acquire less things in the future. But I just can't get on board with her directions to just toss it all and ended up taking multiple carloads of things to Goodwill, sold a few things and, of course, I must tell you about the books... 

This method helped me to recognize that I had a lot of books that I just didn't need to keep. I was holding on to books that I got when I worked in publishing, books I thought I might read someday, books I read and liked, art books, cookbooks and reference books. When I am honest with myself, I find that I primarily read ebooks these days. I look up reference info and consume most of my visual art online. I only consult about half of the cookbooks I own. All of that adds up to a major purge of my bookshelves. 

I brought a box of books to the used book store and found it to be depressing how little value they hold. I figured there had to be a more worthy and satisfying way of getting rid of books that I once treasured and, in some cases, felt like contained a bit of my personal history. Enter the Little Free Library system! From their website:

A Little Free Library is a “take a book, return a book” free book exchange. They come in many shapes and sizes, but the most common version is a small wooden box of books. Anyone may take a book or bring a book to share.
Little Free Library book exchanges have a unique, personal touch. There is an understanding that real people are sharing their favorite books with their community; Little Libraries have been called "mini-town squares."

Minneapolis and St. Paul are rich in Little Free Libraries. Pair that with the fact that I was biking to and from work past a slew of them every day and I found my book disposal solution! I made it my goal to drop a book or two into new libraries and altered my bike routes to go past new spots to leave my books. I would load a couple of books into my bike bag in the morning and take a meandering ride home to drop it off (if my coworkers didn't want to claim the books first!). I took pictures of most of my donations as a fun way to remember it for myself and then realized a collage would be fun to see when I was done. 

Here they are!

While Kondo's method is not without its flaws and extremes, you can safely add me to the list of people who benefited from the experience and have enjoyed talking about applying the method to my home. A number of months afterwards, I am happy to report that I haven't missed anything that I donated and have enjoyed the ease of living in a tidier space.

PS I didn't mention her folding methods for tanks and tshirts, but I give those a thumbs up, too!

More Tales of Woe

My summer bucket list has taken a back seat as I start week 7 of recovering from whatever it was that took me down during my horrible vacation week.  The last month or so has consisted almost entirely of resting/tending to my body, going to doctor appointments, working and doing what is minimally necessary to keep my life going.  In the last month I have visited my primary care doctor, my acupuncturist (numerous times), an allergist and a dermatologist.  I am throwing everything I can at this illness! I am happy to report that I have seen steady improvement over the last week, so I am really hopeful that I am going to be back to my old self very soon.  Today is the first day I have felt vibrant, alive and relatively comfortable in my body in far too long!  It was glorious, productive and extremely restorative.

In addition to my health problems, we also had a scary health situation with Tchazo.  Apparently, I needed to add some more stress to my life because being swollen, covered in rashes and itching like mad 24-7 isn't enough stress!

Two weeks ago, after spending some time in the backyard with us, we noticed Tchazo was acting strangely.  He was falling down a lot, having trouble standing back up on his own and one of his feet was swollen.  We thought he might have gotten it stuck somewhere and hurt it, but it didn't seem broken.  We thought maybe he had encountered a bug/bee, but we couldn't find a sting or a bite.  We decided to let him rest through the night and planned to see what it looked like in the morning before making any decisions.  By the morning, it had swelled to 3 times the size of his other feet and had become red and nasty looking.  Paul took him to the vet, thus beginning what was to be a full week of almost daily vet visits, lots and lots of drugs and tests, a plethora of blood/pus drainage and necrosis.

In the end, the vet was pretty confident that he had been bitten by a poisonous spider.  I didn't even know we had poisonous spiders in Minnesota!

Paul has been an excellent nurse to Tchazo.  Tchazo's foot had a sizable patch of necrosis which the vet had to cut away.  The wound was too large to stitch closed, so Paul was taught how to perform sterile wound care and bandage changes.

I think Tchazo knows Paul is helping him out because he is very patient during the daily bandaging sessions.  We have been taking pictures of his wound to monitor it and make sure there is no infection.  I am sparing you those pictures (and the pictures of my rashes, too!).  So far he is healing on his own, which means we can avoid surgery.  Considering his other health issues, surgery might not have been a viable option for him anyway, so we are really relieved his foot is healing.  There were a few days where his system was so overrun with toxins from the bite that he wasn't moving, drinking, eating or really able to do anything other than lay there in glassy-eyed misery.  I know people always say that cats are the ones with 9 lives but I am starting to think that this dog of ours was blessed with that same quality!

It feel like I have been that person who always seems to have a dramatic story to tell lately.  In addition to the major stories I've shared with you here, there have been some more minor incidences as well.  Like that night last week when I was home by myself trying to fall asleep and heard a strange noise.  When I got up to look outside, I saw a strange man crouching down in my fenced in backyard.  For the record, a call to Paul who was 20-30 minutes away yielded a response time 45 minutes faster than a call to the police did.  Yep, the police took 1 hour and 15 minutes to get here and when they did, they didn't even look around my yard beyond skimming with a flashlight from their car.  After I originally saw Intruder Man, he disappeared, leaving the gate open so I knew I hadn't imagined it.  After about 30 minutes, he came back and was walking around the yard.  When Paul pulled up, Intruder Man walked out of the yard towards the car.  Paul confronted him and questioned him.  His story was that he was "waiting for somebody" and he willingly obliged Paul's aggressive order to vacate the premise.  Good luck resting well after that!

Then, there was that other night where I was having trouble sleeping because I had read a gruesome description of civil war amputations right before trying to fall asleep and it was haunting my dreams.  In my half asleep state of mind, I kept becoming aware of sirens and then drifting out of it again, only to awake to more sirens.  This was the first night in many weeks that we had turned off the air conditioning and I was thinking, "Man!  It is so much louder when we have the windows open.  I don't remember there being this many sirens usually."  That cycle continued for a while longer before I realized that the sirens were all stopping close to our house.  When I got up to look out front, I realized that someone else was having a far worse night than I was.

The street was closed and full of emergency vehicles.  A shop on the block had caught on fire.  The firefighters were using axes to break the windows and saws (for what, I am not sure), which was a surreal thing to see and hear at 1:30 AM and also served as further fuel for my gruesome civil war dreams.

And then, on Paul's birthday, we came home after having been gone all day.  While unlocking the door, we heard Tchazo making non-Tchazo type shrieking barks.  We were freaked out thinking that Tchazo, who was already wounded, had had something else horrible happen to him while we were gone.  It took us a minute to find him once we got inside.  He had managed to lock himself in the bathroom and was totally scared out of his mind.  He must have gone into the bathroom and in the process of turning around, his giant cone must have snagged the door and closed it.  He, having not had bathroom issues since he was a puppy, was so scared that he peed and then managed to knock down everything in the bathroom that wasn't secured into place in his frantic twirling about.  After we cleaned up the mess and calmed him down, we had a laugh about the ridiculousness of this scenario!

I am a frequent listener of The Moth podcast, which ends with a sign-off to the effect of, "May you have a story-worthy week."  After the last few months, I am not sure that is a very nice thing to wish for someone!  At this point, I would cherish a humdrum, uneventful, story-free week!

I've been away from the blog for a while and for the most part, have been laying low, trying to get better.  I have managed a few fun events here and there, so I am going to try to catch up on those posts this week.  Paul had a birthday!  I picked and preserved over 10 pounds of blueberries! I got a new camera!  More to come...sans woes.

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Summer Vacation

I wish I could remember how that book ends.  I'm sure there is a useful lesson in it for me, because my last week was indeed no good.  I've documented a little bit of it here, but needed to give it some distance before fully chronicling the series of events that occurred during what was supposed to be a week of rest, relaxation and fun at the end of a demanding span of time at work and home.  For your enjoyment and my future reference, I shall now tell you the story of my vacation week.  Please do keep in mind that I am able to laugh at it all now.  Also keep in mind that everything will work out OK in the end, but man was this an unfortunate series of events (that was a good book, too!).

Oh, and you might want to grab a snack.  This is a long post.

The week began with us getting stormed out of our much anticipated patio lunch and barred from entry at the lighthouse.  It then quickly proceeded into the breaking-our-dog part of the week, which I fully explained in this post.

What I didn't mention there was that the glorious bask in the sun with our tea on our last morning at camp seems to have set off some sort of horrible reaction in my system.

Partway through the drive home on Tuesday, my eyes and face started to swell up.  I didn't pay it much attention because we were really concerned about Tchazo and I thought it was just a little sunburn.  Well, when I woke up Wednesday morning, my face and eyes were extremely swollen and red and I had rashes on my hands, arms, neck and back.  I've mentioned here before that my skin is really sensitive (eczema and other sensitivities) and a variety of things can set it off, but it usually doesn't get anywhere near this bad.  I tried antihistamines and a variety of other approaches including a visit to the acupuncturist.  My acupuncturist linked that time in the sun with my body's freak out and she is usually pretty right on, so that is the theory I am going with.

In order to give my skin time out of the sun to heal, I had to back out of my fun plans for another rooftop American Craft Council party.  I was really looking forward to the planned Craft Cage Match but being that I looked like I had just come out of a cage match myself and remembering that there was little to no shade on the roof, I knew I needed to skip it.

So, at this point in the week there is me, at home, on "vacation", feeling like crap, looking like crap and not able to be exposed to the sun.  Fun times!  Whenever I am feeling down, I am always pretty quick to recognize that things could be worse.  In this case, it came true!  It got worse!  Let me continue...

I woke up Friday morning still a physical mess but at least my swelling was residing a bit and I was starting to look like myself again.  We had a storm roll through town overnight and when I went out to my alley, I was stunned to see that a very large tree had split at the base and fallen down on a neighbor's garage, taking power lines down with it.

I didn't know trees did that sort of thing!  It seemed like it was a solid, healthy tree.  I guess the winds must have been really, really strong and the tree had some sort of hidden weakness.  We have a really large silver maple tree in our back yard that has proven its weakness in past storms by dropping limbs freely.  I was grateful that our tree had only dropped small limbs in fairly inconsequential locations during the storm.  I was also grateful that we had it pretty aggressively trimmed when we bought the house 4 years ago as I think that has helped it be as strong as a weak tree can be. Anyway, I counted my lucky stars that we didn't have any damage and hoped the neighbor's had good insurance.

By Friday night, I was feeling well enough to go through with my plans.  My sister had taken the night off because there was an outdoor concert we were both interested in seeing.  We invited other friends and had a nice little group of us at the show.  We found a table in a great location under an event tent.  The tent was serving double duty as it provided shade and also was good for the group as we had heard rain was in the forecast.

Sure enough!  The rain started during the first of 3 acts.  At first, it was cute.  The staff were able to squeegee the water off of the stage so the musicians could keep playing.  A few people pulled out their umbrellas and some fun loving souls danced in the rain.

The scene quickly changed when the storm became super aggressive.  In a matter of seconds the innocent rain turned into torrential downpours with winds that threatened to lift up the giant cement blocks that were anchoring down the tent.  We made a run for the nearby parking garage and on the way, a tree branch whipped out in front of Paul, found its way inside his lip and gouged his gums!  Yep.  That really happened.  By the time we got to shelter Paul was REALLY unhappy, his lip was swelling up and his mouth was bleeding.  He wasn't that excited about the show in the first place, was going along to be a good sport and then all of that happened.  When a tree punches you in the mouth, it is easy to get a little cranky.

So, we were in the entrance of the parking garage, watching the torrential rain coming down sideways, the trees bending and whipping around, listening to the emergency sirens wail and witnessing musicians coming in and dumping water out of their guitars.  One girl had a very nice camera that had gotten drenched.  We hope the dry blanket we lent her helped save it!  In the midst all of this Paul says something to the effect of, "Let's just go home."  And, my sister Jessy says something to the effect of, "Are you guys sure this isn't going to pass and they'll be able to finish the show?"  And I am thinking, "This storm is SERIOUS.  I am not going anywhere until it chills out.  This is not one that is just passing through and letting us get on with our evening."

We waited until the winds and rain returned to a non-threatening level and we got in the car to go home.  A few minutes later, we passed our first bad omen:

As we ventured on, we kept encountering flooded streets and having to turn around and zig zag our way home.  The closer we got to our house, the more and more tree damage I saw.  After plowing through some water, our car started to make a bad noise.  "Oh, its just the wet brakes", we told ourselves.  Except the sound was happening when there were no brakes on.  With thoughts of our giant, weak tree (it isn't anything special to our tree, I hear all silver maples have this tendency), we were really anxious to get home and see if our pets and our house were ok.  We figured we'd deal with the car later.

We pulled into the alley, I see such a mess that I have to jump out of the car to clear branches out of the way so we can drive down the alley.  When we get to the tree that had fallen the previous night, we see that it rolled off the garage and smashed a truck.

I then look over to where I can usually see the tallest part of our tree and I see nothing.  Pit. In. Stomach.

We move a little farther down the alley and that is when we see limbs of our tree covering our parking pad and our garage.  Fearing the worst, I get a better look at the house and see that there are lots of limbs around and hanging from wires, but the house seems to be ok.  Big. Exhale.

We reverse out of the alley and park in front of the house because the fallen limbs of our tree are blocking the alley.  When we come up to the front door, we can hear Tchazo barking like a maniac.  Stunned, we head to the backyard not knowing what to do, taking in all of the details.  We notice a heavy limb has crushed our back fence and is resting on it.

limb on fence after we sawed off part of it

We notice the light and motion detector have been smashed clear off of the garage, the roof has branches wedged underneath the shingles and the fascia, gutter apron and siding is banged up.

But, most of all, we notice how those tree limbs rammed into our garage door.

Since we couldn't tell in the dark which lines were power lines and which ones were not, we attempted to call the electric company.  After 30 minutes waiting on hold, we gave up.  We also got the claim going with our insurance company and counted our blessings that we could still be in our home and that we still had functioning utilities.

Even though our house wasn't damaged, besides the gutters, more storms were expected overnight and I wasn't feeling lucky. We moved the car 2 blocks away to where the trees were tiny and freshly planted. We also made the decision not to sleep in bedroom, which is located in range of tree limbs.  With all of the bedrooms being on the second floor, I felt safest sleeping in the living room.  I may have been freaked out enough that I prepared an emergency bag containing: dog leash, dog meds, cat carrier, toiletries, change of clothes, water, wallet and phone.  And, if I am being honest, I threw my knitting project in the bag, too.  What can I say?  It made me feel safer to sleep next to it!  Although, I only slept a few minutes at a time since I felt as if the other shoe might drop at any moment.

We made it through the night!  Breakfast plans with a friend cancelled and evenings plans no longer a priority, we set to work breaking down the tree mess.  Literally with the branches and figuratively with insurance.  Oh yeah, and I was still covered with terrible rashes and trying to avoid the sun.  Yay, vacation!

All it took was a little walk through the neighborhood to realize it could have been so much worse (see me, tempting fate again!).  I only went a block or so in each direction and saw more trees down than I could count.

downed power lines

I also took a stab at fixing the noise the car was making.  The lining in the wheel well had gotten bent and was rubbing the tire.  I muscled it back into place...success!  This might be a coincidence or maybe not, but ever since that night, the control panel on the door seems to be floating, unsecured.  We still have to figure that one out.

So, the icing on this cake that was this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad vacation week was that I was planning to host a Crafternoon gathering on my back deck on Sunday to wrap up what was to have been a wonderful week.  Earlier in the week, our beautiful chairs demonstrated a weakness in their design and had to be brought back to the maker for repairs (not his fault).  At the time I was really bummed out that my fantasy of the event that included my pretty chairs and my friends in them wasn't going to happen and I was going to have to dig out the stupid old folding chairs.  I knew it was silly, but I was a little bummed.  And, then this whole mess with the tree happened and made my chair disappointment seem so silly and small in comparison.

By Sunday, I definitely needed some time with friends and to get the heck away from my house.  We moved our gathering to a nearby cafe that had power (so many residences and businesses in the Twin Cities area didn't have power for days).  It was a great stress reliever to laugh with friends about how ridiculous my week had been.  I think I carried my luck (or lack thereof) with me to the gathering, though.  Our waiter kept taking our order and then a really long time later coming by and apologizing for not having taken our order yet and letting us know he would be back to get our order soon.  He did that more than once!

Now that I have had a little more distance from the week, I am mulling it over looking for the silver lining and the lessons I might find in this.  Since you've made it this far into my insanely long story of my week, I don't think you'll mind if I get a little more share-y than usual.  I have been struggling with perfectionism lately, feeling like it is guiding what I do and how I do it in an unhealthy way.  It is causing me to carry stress that is totally unnecessary and rather pointless.  I've also developed more of a worrying habit than I would like. I am realizing that this is diverting my energy from where it could be better spent. 

So if I were to try to make sense of all of this crap, I could find the messages pretty easily.  What I think this week told me, in no subtle way, is that I ultimately have very little to NO control over my world.  It is telling me to let go and just roll with it.  Preparing and planning are ok to some degree, but in the end it'll all probably work out differently than I planned and I may or may not be prepared for the outcome.  If I can accept that, I don't need to spend nearly as much of my time and energy in the way that I have been.  I have received the message that trying to make everything perfect and/or worrying about stuff too much gets you a rash covered body, a husband with a wounded mouth and a garage that was beat up by a tree.

But, you know what?  Even though this week brought me to that crazy place where I could laugh and cry at the same time, I never lost sight of the good stuff that was sprinkled in there, too.  That hike was beautiful.  I read a great book.  My friends and family were quick to offer help. Paul and I know how to support each other when the shit hits the fan.   I met more of my neighbors.  We now have a lot of firewood.  We have savings we can draw from to help us through this and insurance.  I am thankful.

So, Universe, I appreciate the lessons and I will work on what you've taught me.  Now, please go help somebody else because I have had enough.

Garden in the Ground!

Things are getting done around here!  The peas are up and finding their way to the trellises.

The rhubarb is growing and growing and growing.

Our garden is bigger this year!  We still have the main space that we've had in the past, plus more!  The extra space is allowing us to really focus on tomatoes; We have 7 tomato plants this year!

We now have the middle section and the rain garden section that we covered with tarps last year ready for planting.  We tilled it this year and are going to see how plants fare in those areas.  We already know the rhubarb is happy where it is! The ground to the left of the rhubarb is not going to be planted because it has a very flimsy rain garden pipe running underneath it.  This year I've planted basil in an earth box and am hoping  that the space where I put it will still get enough sun after the flowers in the rain garden grow big and tall.

The area between the rain garden and the fence houses broccoli, kale and collards.  The rain garden always starts out looking so paltry.  By the end of the summer, it will overtake that space with many of the plants hitting 6 feet tall.

We are also trying a little experiment.  Here is a bird's eye view of an area I am going to try to grow corn in. This area was successful with cannas, so I am hoping corn will be hardy enough to grow tall and fill in the space nicely.  I've tried to grow strawberries here to no avail.  There is really no good way to block this space off from doggie foot traffic, so I am not setting my hopes too high.

I've also tucked in a hill of zucchini between the fence and the air conditioner.  This has been unused space in the past, so I am going to see if we can get a little more productivity out of our garden.  Paul doesn't like zucchini enough to devote space to it in the main part of the garden, so this is a good compromise.  I just put the seeds in this weekend, so I should be seeing sprouts in a week or so.

Another crop tucked in a potentially tricky spot: mustard greens and freshly planted chard seeds. I've put a cage over them as protection.  This space has been known to fall victim to errant hoses and footsteps in past years.  Hopefully this measure will protect the plants from damage.

Despite having tried for the past 3 years, we have yet to be successful with soybeans.  Last year we gave them a good, sunny spot and tended to them pretty well.  Then we went out of town for a weekend and came back to the pods having dried up and expelled their seeds.  Due to all of those seeds, this year we have a self-sown crop of soybeans.  Since we tilled the garden space and spread the seeds around in the process, we actually have an entire garden full of soybean sprouts!  We are letting them take over this area and keeping a few other ones alive throughout the garden.  I think volunteers are quite fun.

For posterity's sake, here is what we have in the backyard garden this year:

• Sweet Peas
• Mustard Greens: Green Wave
• Kale: Dwarf Blue Curled 
• Collard: Vates Non-heading
• Swiss Chard: Red and White Mix
• Green Beans: Blue Lake 274
• Pole Beans: Trionfo Violetto
• Radish: French Breakfast
• Basil: Italian Genovese and African Blue
• Arugula
• Cucumber: Marketmore
• Sweet Corn: Buttergold
• Lemongrass
• Mint: Ginger Mint and Peppermint
• Broccoli
• Zucchini/Squash: Cocozelle
• Tomatoes: Red Fig, Black Cherry, Garden Peach, Cherokee Purple, Moskvich, Costoluto Genovese, Sungold
• Soybeans: Agate
• Rhubarb (perennial)
• Spring Onions (perennial)

I've also been adding in plants in other parts of the yard.  It is easier to do this now that we are a 1 dog household.  Tchazo is fairly good about leaving things alone, so I feel like plantings outside of the fenced garden might have a good chance of survival.  I've created a little ring around the base of each of our apple trees and have put in sweet woodruff as a companion plant.  I'm excited about what I might do with it once it grows big enough to harvest (not planning to eat it, though!).  Plus, it is supposed to be a deterrent to coddling moths which can mess up your apples.

Now that the backyard is under control, it is time to turn to the front yard and deal with this mess of a "rain garden" that I inherited.  I've also got to prep the space behind the rain garden for bell peppers and get a few more herbs planted in the front garden.

I have also been battling what I now know is Creeping Bellflower.  It is popping up everywhere in my yard!  I have it in the front, the back, the side and the alley.  I will be launching an all-out attack on this weed this year.  There is a lot of digging in my future as these suckers spread through deep and determined tubers!  I dug some out today and there were an impressive size!

One last note: I have used marsh hay at mulch in my garden this year.  It was hard to get!  Apparently the straw bale gardening craze is causing the garden centers to sell out of their hay super fast.  I had to scramble quickly to nab 2 bales and will have to time it right to pick up a few more for the rest of our space.  We liked how it worked for weed control and holding in moisture last year.  When it came time to till this year, we tilled the straw from last year in to the soil.  It helped to loosen up our heavy soil so we are going to go with it again this year. Last year I used straw, but apparently marsh hay is even better as it doesn't have any seeds that might introduce more weeds into your garden.  Hooray for simple steps that make gardening easier on us and on the environment!

Trinity Stays Home

After 5 days away, I am really excited that Paul is on his way home.  He has been in the boundary waters with some friends where there is no cell reception, no stores, no facilities.  Before he left, I took a picture of him with all of his gear (Yep!  That is a keg of homebrew he is holding.).  If the weather on the internet was correct, this was the only time he was dry on the entire trip. I am sure he will return with lots of stories.  He made this video of the trip he took with this same group last year.

BWCA 2012 from PnT Vs the World on Vimeo.

While Paul was hanging out off the grid Tchazo, Fanny and I stayed home and had some good bonding time.

Occupy Tchazo's Crate

I had really wanted to spend the weekend getting our plants and seeds in the garden but the weather did not cooperate.  It has been one big rainfall after another lately, which means the ground is too wet to work even in the times between the storms.  I am aching to get out there and plant, so I really hope this coming weekend fairs better.

I have been enjoying eating as many meals as possible outside.  A particularly enjoyable one included a brand new issue of Interweave Knits and a wonderful gin and seltzer.  For the record, I am a big fan of using seltzer instead of tonic water.  It really lets the gin shine!

After nearly 4 years, we finally have a complete set of deck furniture!  We had the table and chairs custom built for us by Putzin' Bob. We got the table last year and I just picked up the chairs over the weekend.  They are made from reclaimed redwood deck boards and old picnic table parts.  The table needs a coat of sealant to bring the wood color back and then it will be a matching set.  I can't wait to host dinner parties back there this summer!

Tchazo and I found windows of time between rain storms each day to take walks.  He is such a great dog. He gets a little nervous when Paul is gone and walks help calm him down.  I've enjoyed taking new routes each time and taking note of all of the landscaping and plants in my neighbors' yards.
 

I spied Fanny keeping watch over the neighborhood and the passing cars.

My job has been really busy lately and so have my evenings and weekends.  It was really marvelous to have had this past weekend focus on doing things at home.  No schedule to follow.  No words necessary.  Even though I couldn't get into the garden like I wanted to, I was able to scheme up some landscaping and planting ideas, go shopping for supplies and plants and get a lot of other house projects done.  I re-caulked the bathtub (mold sucks!), did a major purge of the file cabinet (copies of every lease I've ever signed? gone!), cleaned out the garage (sort of - it is still a mess), donated stuff to the thrift store (good riddance!), cooked (simply), cleaned (lots of rain = muddy floors) and even relaxed a bit (watched an entire movie!). As much as I love to go go go and be social, sometimes what my soul needs is some time at home with companions who set a good example for soaking up the day.

I am getting closer to feeling recharged but will remember the lesson I've been relearning: sometimes no plans are the best plans.