Flowers Everywhere

We have a lot of damage in our yard from the winter snow and long periods of night and day freezing this winter. Several very tall pyrmidalis are bent clear to the ground. However on the up side, the roses seem to have thrived on it as well as assorted bulbs I had given up for lost in the last two or three years. The climbing rose on the back deck has taken off and is covered with blooms and tons of buds. This rose is spread over several trellis (trellisi?) and is shading our deck which gets the worst of the afternoon sun here.


In the back near the garage little clumps of spiderwort I planted have spread mightily, weed-like actually and are surrounding the pots of petunias we planted this year and are reaching for the ginko tree I have out there. Guess I will have to haul the shovel out and do some thinning.

Here's more spiderwort draping itself over the pink snapdragons. Some of the other things seem to be slow in coming along. Maybe we need to water more. We have already had three days in a row of 90 degree heat. Still, there are poppies getting ready to bloom and some little wild red columbine from Mt. Rainier that we planted a couple of years ago. The columbine is in the shade and it does need water. It's a long way from the forested canopy in the Cascades. We've started experimenting with plants that don't require a lot of water.

Hope your gardens are growing well in your own climate. Meanwhile we will keep searching for those xeriscape plants.

All The Small Things

It's getting late and this time of night my mind wanders somewhat. We just had our 5th wedding anniversary this month. I was looking through my pictures and found this one. I wonder if my husband really knew what he was getting into. The caption for this picture might be "What do you mean there are seven more?" or "Yes, she really is coming home with us." The wedding was made up of many small things. Many small grandkids. We were over the legal limit for flower girls. We are cutting up a small cake, there was a larger one but the caterer (oh no, you didn't!) cut it up for us. Maybe it was all the extra cakes that threw the cake cutter off. We had this little extra cake just in case we ran out and, there was another cake for a good friend who celebrated his birthday by attending our wedding with his wife. So we surprised him and and sang him happy birthday. It was all in all a good party.

And my small house is filled with smaller houses. There are three functional dollhouses here, and one under construction. The girls are hoping I will get started on the in construction soon again. I am trying to clear out some space to get at it. What is that fascination with little things, the smaller the better? I have my original dollhouse from (gasp) 1946, and even a little of the furniture. That in itself is amazing considering that when my sister and I got through playing dollhouse we took the chimney off and rode the roof like a horse. I bought little dollhouse stuff to put in the not yet built dollhouse. Tiny dishes, itty bitty furniture; I made tiny books, tiny record albums. (ha! who has albums anymore?) Actually this is the second not-built dollhouse. The first is a three story, 10 room Victorian that I bought myself for my birthday one year. I can be overly enthusiastic at times. I decided I needed to start smaller and now have a 6 room doll house that is started but not by very much. Maybe I can work my way down to a two room doll cabin I won't finish. That didn't keep me from buying little bathroom fixtures, two sets of Victorian bathroom fixtures actually. In my enthusiam I sometimes forget what I have stashed away. A lot of it is from garage sales, other people building dollhouses and giving up. That's it people, just give up and let me have your little tiny furniture.

And rocks. Any rock gatherers out there? I have agates I found with my Dad and he polished for me, and rocks from nearly every river in this state. I have glass bowls with rocks in them all over the house. My jade plant has two humungous pink quartz chunks and a bunch of crystals around. My whole family seems to collect rocks. And fossils. And marbles, the marbles I had when I was a kid plus some newer ones also in a glass bowl. So ha, I do have all my marbles. I need some tiny rocks to put in a tiny bowl in one of those dollhouses. And tiny pictures of those grandkids for the little walls. What walls, better get out the Elmers and start building again.

Grandma Flunks Pre-School

We were all scrubbed, dressed, fed, and pottied so Bel and Grandma headed off for toddler group this lovely Friday morning. An hour and a half of supervised playtime at the Community College, how much trouble can we get into to anyway? And let me say now, I have been before and they did not throw me out. Don't tell my grandkids but I was not so good at following rules when I was in school, and apparently time has not improved me a bit.

Small group time came and Bel is wandering around the room and I am looking out the window. The backdoor opens and out she slides so after her I go. The yard has pre-school in it, it's their time outside. We are assaulted by several short people screaming "babies, babies, there's babies out here." Lions and tigers and babies, oh my. Some small person informs me that babies are not allowed only big kids. Bad Grandma says, "what big kids? I don't see anyone but you guys," and I begin backing towards the door. It's locked, from the inside. Okay, it's going to be "Lord of the Flies" all over again and they think I'm Piggy. Bel snatched her arm away and made a run for the back forty without me. Good thing there's a fence. Ms. Teacher person runs over waving my father's finger at me and repeating, "no babies, it's toddler time." The aforementioned small boy informs her he is almost 5 and not a toddler. He's getting no respect from anyone here.

"Door locked," I mumble, and she says "run after her," running is not what I do best so I just shrugged and mumbled more "can't run" and pursued the grandchild with my usual flat out slow saunter, irritating I'm certain but actually all I'm capable of after about 5 seconds. I catch Bel and give her old fireman's sling over my shoulder and we amble down the walk. Some weirdo guy from the parking lot with a dog leash leans over the fence and says "put a lifejacket on them, and this leash and you can tow them down the creek that way!" "What the hell," I say to myself? Now I'm trapped with my youngest granddaughter in a David Lynch flick. I walk up to the fence and put on my best crabby butt face and yell "Beat it, weirdo." And he backs off.

We get to the door and by this time Ms. Teacher has found a key and with shaking hands is apologizing and trying to get the door open but not very sucessfully. Someone opens it from the inside, I say "thanks," to both door openers and return to the land of sanity. Bel has to potty, the door is locked. Locked by someone from the pre-school side who forgot to unlock it. Oops, there is pee on my shoulder. We get inside and make the rest of the deposit in the proper receptacle. Miss Bel has been working diligently on her potty skills and she is very upset by this turn of events. She wants to go home and I say sure and I tell her I just bought her lots of new clean panties and she can have her pick at home and how would she like to go to Mickey D's on the way. So being true Americans we balmed our sorrows with chicken nuggets and a tiny cheese burger. When we got home she selected some nice loud pink undies, I got a clean shirt, and we took our fat burgers out onto the deck and had a lunch in the swing. Home Sweet Home.

Mom Bakes with Chris and Dave

Baking a Cake with my kids.
Preheat oven.
Check to be certain that there are no Stretch Armstrongs or plastic Star Wars soldiers on the oven shelves.
Remove paints, blocks, and fishing gear from table.
Wash everybody's hands.
Grease pans.
Crack and chop nuts. Shred chocolate.
Measure 2 cups flour; remove David's hands from flour; wash flour off him. Re-measure flour. Crack more nuts to replace those David ate.
Shred more chocolate to replace what Chris ate.
Wash everybody's hands again.
Put flour, baking powder and salt in sifter.
Get dustpan and brush up pieces of bowl David knocked on floor. Get another bowl.
Answer doorbell. Return to kitchen.
Remove Chris's hands from bowl. Wash Chris.
Answer telephone. Return.
Remove 1/4 inch salt from greased pan. Look for David. Grease another pan.
Answer telephone again.
Return to kitchen and find David. Remove his hands from bowl.
Wash everyone's hands again.
Take up greased pan and remove layer of nut shells in it.
Head for Chris, who runs, knocking bowl off table.
Wash kitchen floor, table, walls, dishes. Hose kids off.
Call bakery, place order.
Take two aspirin. Lie down

Footnotes to Tuesday

I spent yesterday with my 2 year-old granddaughter who was suffering with an ear infection. It's so hard to watch your g-baby wailing and clutching her ear, or anyone's baby for all of that. Her Daddy soon arrived took her and it was off to the pediatrician where she was dosed with kid's ibuprophen and was prescribed an antibiotic. It's very touching for me to see my big, tall, son packing his tiny girl around and seeing her relax in his arms. Once back to Grandma's house Daddy dosed her with the pink stuff and returned to work. It was colored hot pink, stained everything, and tasted loudly like mutant bubblegum. After the ibuprophen kicked in she perked up for about 1/2 an hour and then proceeded to barf up the pink medicine and a scrambled egg. Scary bad barfing for an hour. Then it stopped and I got a little fluid down her and she fell asleep watching an Oswald DVD with half an eye. Then Mommy arrived, good medicine that, and she smiled again. I called this morning and she is much better and steadfastly refuses to drink the pink medicine that, as it turned out, was the likely culprit for the barf-fest.

The end of the day found us retrieving my van, oh joy, oh thank God for plastic. Looking good, glad to have it back, now to get that muffin out of there.

The Van Saga - Part 3

Ptui! The van is still being repaired. Since a week last Friday. And that's not counting the two days in a smaller garage where the fellow sent me on the a bigger garage. Most of the time has been spent waiting for parts. It has a fried climate control something or other, and a toasted compressor. More $$. I have noticed that some things, repair parts, catalog orders, etc. are taking longer and longer to get here. I'd guess some of that is in part due to our faltering economy, the price of gas, and the remote location of our little city. It is not economical to drive over here with just one thing. They expected parts on Wednesday and those went right in but one little part did not come, a filter of some kind, due in Friday. It showed up Friday and IT WAS THE WRONG SIZE. And they didn't get it yesterday, Monday, either. Wah, wah! My eyes are going around in my head like those little fruit things on a slot machine. A rider with no horse.

And I remembered there was a muffin in the way back seat cup holder that one of the grandkids left behind. I mentioned it when I called and the guy told me it hadn't gotten moldy; it had just dried up to a rock like consistency. Great! They've had my van so long the muffin fossilized. And then my filled-in punch card for my favorite drive-through coffee place is in the van too. You can have anything on their menu free with a complete punch out on the card. So there is a giant mocha latte with whipped cream waiting for me on the way home from the garage with the van. I repeat; wah, wah,wah.

Deja Poo

When grandmotherhood appeared I was delighted, and I am still delighted. I had forgotten some of the less delightful portions of small ones though, like potty training. I will say straight up that I was not good at it when my sons were that age. As a young mother I was totally dumbfounded as to why a child who could manage his clothes and the potty, and knew how everything worked would just refuse to do it after he had learned, and you know who you are! One of them went so far as to sneak off behind the bushes and dig a little latrine with his little shovel and do his business there once. He always has been an outdoors guy. Fortunately for me their daycare Mom completed the job.

Now my youngest grand-girl is in the potty process. And she too knows how it all goes, but for whatever reasons there are in a small child's head she too still poos in her drawers. And she doesn't seem to like it. Her mom is much better at this than I was and far more organized but grand-girl is the daughter of the latrine digger and every bit as, uh, self directed. She pees in the potty and while she is here she mostly attends to that task on her own with some reminders. But, for the rest of it she prefers to hide under the table or in some corner and attend to her business in private. I've tried the usual, careful watching, bribery, no "Martha Speaks" unless she at least gets on the toidy and tries. So, if she gets quiet and out of sight we track her down not just to make sure she isn't cutting her hair, or painting a wall, but to plop (pun intended) her on the potty. So Friday she upped the ante. She was just standing looking a book on the footstool when the odious odor appeared. No hiding, no grunty face, and she looked disgusted, and wailed, "Cece, there's poop in my jammies," well, duh. She's tiny, and she was so upset as though someone else had done this to her, it was hard for me not to laugh. You can see where I might have failed with my own kids. I'd guess this piece of child training will end soon even if it feels like forever, so I don't get too excited unlike when my boys were small. Deja Poo!