HandyHouse

Green Things

2010-09-18T11:19:00.000-04:00

In the endless attempt to grow a decent garden, this year's planting is now underway. On time, no less! As our northern neighbors head toward their last harvests, we are just now poking the earth to life down here in the sunny south. Our compost pile this year finally produced some nice-looking soil, and a fat herd of wriggly earthworms, courtesy of the summer rains. Two of the four garden boxes have been topped up and amended with some organic inputs—bone and blood, basically, with fish emulsion to come. Yes, I know, "Ew." Our garden may be organic; it's certainly not vegan. But, I can't deny the power of stinking fish emulsion to produce some happy, healthy plants, so in it will go at a very awkward arm's-length from me.

The other two boxes still need de-rooting from last year, which is a backbreaking task that I will put off as long as possible because I'm just that way about backbreaking tasks. Unfortunately, that means putting it off until the very late date of . . . tomorrow. After running. And blueberry pancakes. And anything else I can think of.

So far, I've put down four types of tomatoes (two of each, how Noahidistic), along with broccoli, an eggplant, the first of the lettuces and some sugar snap peas that seem a little disinclined to participate in the whole "growing" thing. A quarter of one box and two more total boxes await later rotations of lettuces, more broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and possibly another attempt at Brussels sprouts. Strawberries will go in the oldest box elsewhere in the yard. And, this year, I'd also like us to build a deep box for carrots. I figure that if you're going to continue your long history of gardening failures, you might as well go all-in and try everything. The worst thing that happens is the same thing that happens to most of my gardening every year, but the best thing that happens is tasty. It's worth a shot.

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to a previous entry that has a rough planting guide, if you're interested in what grows when around here.

Busting Out

2010-09-15T22:05:00.001-04:00

If you've ever seen Sir David Attenborough's stunning "Planet Earth," you might recall the footage of the Arctic. More specifically, you might remember the sight of a massive, smooth slope of snow unbroken by any trace of life, until, quite unexpectedly, a polar bear pokes out a paw and then a nose and blinks into the light of day. This polar bear has been hibernating, but spring has come at last. It's time to wake to the big, wide world and do those things that polar bears do all day long.

Substitute the flat, heavy, deadening blanket of an overheated Florida summer for that chilly slope, put my lumbering self in the place of that surprisingly agile bear and you have me, this morning, running around Crescent Lake Park. Why, what's this? My shoulders straightened a bit. I breathed in air that didn't stick on the way down. I felt stray, sweaty hairs lift in a slightly cooler breeze and I knew. It's coming. IT. The other half of the year wherein the electricity doesn't come from the too-near lightning of a raging tropical downpour but, rather, from the energizing sparkle of dry-air static and easy breathing and the getting done of things. My whole being blinked.

Now, I've lived here for three decades and have seen more than a few Thanksgivings with temperatures around the 90-degree mark. The heat isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But that little breeze was a reminder that, amidst the chaos of the everyday, our planet is just chugging along on its regular path and is finally—finally!—coming around to what I selfishly esteem The Good Half of the Orbit. All this nonsense about wet and dry seasons; the reality of that orbit 'round these parts is that you have the Doing Season and the Wilting Season, and it is finally time to get up off the fainting couch and get busy.

Perhaps it's no wonder that Florida is an odd place, given that we bust out of the proverbial snowbank just as so much of the nation gets ready to hibernate under it. We have a peskily inconvenient latitude for a northern hemisphere country. We're like the third shift of the nation, always off the regular schedule and wondering why we can't find fried chicken when everyone else is eating breakfast cereal.

For me, I'm just happy that the alarm has gone off and I recognized, as I do every year around now in my own annual processional, that it's time to wake up. After the long sleep of summer, it's an exciting feeling not only to want to get things done, but also to feel like you can find the energy to do them.

The Mulligan

2010-07-14T08:38:00.003-04:00

So what happens when you stop your new-found running—and any semblance of exercise beyond a bit of high-altitude hiking—for three weeks? Do you...

A. Rip open a bag of Cheetos and park yourself on the couch to await the next season of "The Biggest Loser," consoling yourself that at least you're not as big as "those people."

B. Rip open a bag of Cheetos and park yourself on the couch to watch "Pumping Iron," congratulating yourself that you didn't risk getting as big as "those people"

C. Sigh dramatically, rewind your completed Couch to 5K program to Week Four and start over, forced to run outside in the heat because you passive aggressively overslept and now don't have time to go to the air-conditioned gym.

If you answered A, you know me quite well. But, alas, this is not the correct answer outside of my fantasy world, where chewing, lounging and believing in unicorns is all the exercise a body needs. If you answered B, you're close, but it was a gin and tonic and I was too busy goggling in amazement to think about my own pathetic weakness. I have nothing but love for "Pumping Iron."

The correct answer is C. Siiiiiiiiiiiigh.

You also commit and sign up for the first 5K that you will run, not walk. Nor stroll, nor amble, nor meander. Possibly sashay. But certainly run.

So I will see you or think of you at the Susan Komen 5K Race for the Cure in downtown St. Petersburg on October 2, when I'm not thinking that the people who measured five kilometers for that race were clearly mathematically inept morons who made the course much longer than it should be. There's information here: My Race Page

The Things That Get Away From You

2010-05-04T19:03:00.004-04:00

May 2010? Can that be right? Because it feels like time hasn't really passed at all, yet a full five months and a bit have disappeared since I last posted anything to this silly little blog. That is not to say, however, that I've spent those months whiling time away on the couch watching reality television and eating Cheetos, as much as I occasionally want to do exactly that. Especially the Cheetos, preferably in a convenient feedbag strapped to my face. But, no.

2010 has, so far, been far more physically active than the preceding four or five years. I feel better than I have in some time, having continued to work on my overall health since August alongside the good Mr. Handy. We both have come to the growing realization at 41 that time does, indeed, get away from you if you turn your attention away for even a moment. We're nowhere near the cliff's edge of "too little, too late," but I feel like I occasionally glimpse it off there in the pale and hazy distance. That's...strange. Disconcerting, certainly, to really grasp that things, like my life on this planet, are going to end, and within a time frame that I can understand because I've already lived it. Middle age is where the immortality of youth fails. When you're 15, how can you contemplate living another 70 or 80 years? You only know what 15 years feels like, and a few of those you can't even remember. I suspect that's why so many young people at some point think they'll die by the time they're 30. How could they possibly be expected to imagine living longer than a time span that, to them, equals existence, everything?

I, on the other hand, know exactly what 40+ years feels like, and I can expect to get about that many more (plus a few extra decades if I'm lucky). That puts me right in the middle holding this knowledge of halves in my hands, along with the knowledge that I get to decide what to do with it. That's been an interesting bit of yarn to untangle in the last year, but all of this heavy realizing and thinking and accepting responsibility...well, it's also exhilarating, if truth be told. If this is the time that I have, I wonder what I could do with it? How mindfully can I live these years? I do like the idea of a challenge.

So, if this is the start of the second act of my life, then, by gum, I'm at least going into it as fit as I can possibly be. In addition to getting more active in general, I'm in the sixth week of the Couch to 5K running plan doing something that I spent four decades swearing I simply could not, would not do--run. In my case, we'll be charitable and call it jogging, but still, I am doing a running-like motion and, here's the crazy part, enjoying it. Given the fact that I'm built like an arthritic dairy cow rather than a sprightly gazelle, the idea that I would run anywhere for any reason, let alone personal choice, is nothing short of shocking. But run I can and run I do. Once I stopped saying I couldn't, lookee there. I could. And now crazy, vague whisperings like "5K" and "10K" and "do another triathlon" and "get back into yoga because those hamstrings are pathetic" are running through my brain. I missed you these past few years, Crazy Vague Voice. Nice to hear you again.

I've also been spending time on the garden, slogging through ignorance and figuring out how to get something to grow here. Did you know that plants need (non-sulfurous) water? Not only were our boxes acidic, which we repaired through soil amendments and turning off the well water, but I also believe I was not watering our previous plants anywhere near enough. I bought into the advice from the Square Foot Gardening book that their planting methods would lessen the amount of watering needed, but in Florida that has proven to be less than accurate. I planted only two of the boxes this season as experiments because we were losing so much on failures, but both are doing well so far. An unusually cold winter has also resulted in our having blueberries for the first time. They're starting to ripen now but, more importantly, the plants are looking much more healthy. That watering thing, again, I suppose. Next up is to redo the landscaping in the front yard with plants that don't need watering, unlike the straggly grass we have now. I don't mind spending water (a lot of it rainwater) on edibles, but on useless grass? In an overdeveloped and drought-prone area, that seems quite wrongheaded. I hope we can get it done before it's too hot to plant anything and see it live. If not, we'll continue to have the ugly yard on the block until it cools off six months from now.

Many other little tidbits going on, including getting out and about more and meeting people. Apparently, being more social involves leaving the house once in a while and conversing with actual humans. They don't come to you, you see. We've met with some great people on a pretty regular basis and, frankly, it's been fun, even for this avowed nonsocial homebody. The family recipe book is getting at least a small update by the end of the year, although I'm considering going electronic with it rather than print. If you have an opinion on the matter or anything to add, do please send it along when you get a moment. Channel your Inner Julia and share the kitchen love! My book reading is up significantly, although a pile of magazines still mocks me. I'm coming for you, Smithsonian and Mental Floss, so keep on with your sassy little smirking. And I'm about to commandeer, er, borrow the keyboard Jared got for Christmas to relearn some piano, in addition to teaching myself conversational Spanish via podcasts. It is nothing short of mind-boggling to consider the free education and information now available to anyone on the web. The hardest part is deciding what to learn!

We live in amazing times. They won't get away from me.

Thinking about Thanking

2009-11-26T11:05:00.007-05:00

We live in a crazy world of our own design, where obscure markets fluctuate beyond our control while we buy crap we can't afford, and people blow each other up over whose magical story is better, and we seem addicted to fighting about our differences a lot more than appreciating just how much we have in common. That's life. That's the larger human condition at this moment in time. It's a mess, this great big human-built world.

But, I'm just a little, piddling thing, a wee and meager part of that larger human condition. And just as in physics, where the laws of the large fall apart at the wee and meager scale, things look a little different down here. While all these terrible, no good, very bad things swirl around, life down here sort of putters along with random ups and downs that have very little to do with those fluctuating markets and warring factions. You see, no matter what AIG is doing, my cat wants a lap and he wants it now. No matter how big the national debt gets, fresh pumpkin pie still tastes pretty awesome. No matter how many leaders meet to pontificate and promise about global change while doing nothing, my husband's smile and twinkly chestnut eyes still light up the room.

Things might be--well, are--a mess, but today and every day I am thankful for the wee and meager: that smile, that crazy cat, pie, my funny stepson with the gnatlike attention span and wonderfully good heart, bean plants that one day aren't there and the next day are waving at the sun with little heart-shaped hands, loving parents and lunatic sisters, the smell of wood fireplaces, lifelong friends, an office that's more like family, the soundtrack in the Grizzly Hills of Northrend, Grandmom Betty's butter nut cookies, good health and the wonder of muscles that move, modern medicines that help with that good health thing from time to time, a comfy bed, air conditioning, intestinal bacteria, stars that twinkle and planets that don't, winter sunsets on the Gulf, spinybacked orb weavers, El Cap cheeseburgers, a motorcycle ride on a cool day, breathing in and out...an infinite list of wonders that make a wee and meager spot at the tail end of the messy human parade a pretty cool place to be.

I'm thankful.

The Things You Learn

2009-11-08T10:52:00.009-05:00

I finally ran the soil tests on samples from the garden boxes, and it isn't pretty. Last year's decision to use our well water to water the garden instead of the chloramine-laced city water has backfired spectacularly. Why? Because this is Florida, and pretty much every shallow well here is loaded with sulfur. A lot of sulfur. Our well water doesn't have that characteristic rotten-egg smell, but sulfur is there all the same, apparently. As a result of last year's watering, our garden boxes are now pools of acid. So much for trying to conserve city water. Add to that a total absence of nitrogen and other nice things due to depleted compost and the excess acid, and we are in big trouble here.

For the boxes that are already planted, I'll try to amend the soil and hope our rain barrel gets filled often enough during this dry season to avoid watering much with city water. The other two and half boxes? Might just dig them out completely and start anew. Not where I hoped we would be in this second year of gardening, but at least we're figuring it out while we still have about six or seven months of gardening time left. If I don't blow it all being an addle-brained lazybones, that is.

And apologies to Fox for image theft, but sometimes only Homer Simpson will do. D'oh, indeed!

A Quick Musing

2009-11-07T08:26:00.005-05:00

While wandering around here on the railway platform trying to decide what train to take, my mind tends to wander around a lot. Well, let's be honest, it wanders even when I feel full of direction and purpose, but that's beside the point.

I love history. I love imagining the past. I love thinking about all those tough and tender folk that went before me and the barely comprehensible but all too familiar times in which they lived. The WWII years, in particular, have always been fascinating because of the sheer grit and determination people had, along with their ability to make sacrifices that people would be horrified about today in our coddled and convenient world. Take the tires off the car and walk! Knit sweaters for the boys! VICTORY GARDENS, for pete's sake! What a vibrant, if frightening, time to be alive, when you really had to do for yourself in the service of the greater good.

And then I stumble on to something like this, and the 21st century suddenly doesn't look too bad, despite its lack of charming aprons. Click to embiggen a nice reminder that the nostalgia train doesn't always go to the place you imagined it would.

Slacker!

2009-10-30T13:26:00.008-04:00

Yeah, that's me. After the flurry of productivity during August, I became the laziest slug on the planet. I even gave in and planted store-bought seedlings in the garden after taking so long to plant seeds that I overshot the prime weeks. The shame! Now, here we are just shy of the start of November with nothing in particular on the slate except watering a bunch of cheater's lettuce and broccoli and vaguely wondering what magical amendment my soil needs to keep everything from dying halfway to full growth yet again.

The interesting thing is that I don't have anything that I have to do. The things that need to be done get done. I go to work, the house is reasonably clean, all living creatures get fed and clothed. I even got rid of creatures so I would have less to look after, because it was driving me batty. I'm talking about the rest of my time, and the issue of whether time spent doing "nothing" is wasted or not.

On one hand, there's the "less is more" argument--that by not filling every moment with projects, one can experience the actual moment more completely instead of thinking toward the next and the next and the next. Now, ask me if I spend time being that aware of the moment. Eh, not so much.

On the other hand, there is the growing awareness that life is pretty ding-a-danged short, and I shouldn't waste time failing to learn Mandarin and how to design a website and shoe a horse before it's proverbially and literally too late. Why I think I should do those things or other things like them, however, I have no idea.

And on the third hand, there is that streak of busyness encoded in my DNA from all those Puritan, mercantilish, pre-America ancestors, for whom a minute wasted was nothing but a shilling thrown down a well. Everyone thinks puritanical strictness was about offending the gods, but my genes know better, and they're mighty cranky about my lack of productivity right now despite their total silence on the subject of "you have a better idea?"

Sometimes I get the feeling that if I bought a convertible and maybe one of those Italian horn necklaces and took up SCUBA and just happened to have the XY chromosome combination, everyone would smirk and nod knowingly and call this a mid-life crisis. But I'm XX for good, I already know how to dive, those necklaces look lame, and convertibles are hell with hair like mine.

So I guess like any good post-Puritan woman, I'll get on to getting on with it. Eventually. Whatever "it" is.

Adieu, mes chers poulets!

2009-09-28T09:46:00.005-04:00

It's true, Lucy and Ethel are off to a better place. No, not that one, where their molecules get all mixed into the great scrambled egg of the universe. We are ending our backyard chicken experiment and sending them to a nice home in the country. The person adopting them has a variety of poultry out in rural Florida that can free range over an acre. Our girls will have more company (maybe even that of an attractive rooster, nudge nudge) and can get out of the coop and back to their beloved free-roaming, bug-gobbling ways. We cooped them permanently early this year when we realized we could never win the chicken vs. garden war. For all their teeny tiny brains, the girls were remarkably persistent and pretty ingenious in the pursuit of our produce. Now, we've had a number of altercations involving what we think are feral cats getting into the coop late at night (there are bazillions of them here in the urban hood). It could also be young raccoons or rats. Who knows? But, the ongoing cost and stress of trying to create an animal-proof coop that still keeps the girls happy is proving to be more than the benefit of keeping them. Considering that Jeff is now rarely eating eggs and Jared isn't here often enough for us to keep ahead of the egg curve, we had to admit that this experiment has run its course. We learned a great deal, that's for sure.

The girls are sweet and very successful at doing their chicken thing, and we made sure they're going to a good home where they'll be treated very well, if not spoiled rotten. And why not? When you think about what a chicken manages to do with that whole egg-laying thing, they deserve a little spoiling. Consider, oh female readers, that you would have to produce something like a 4-pound baby every 28 hours for two to three years to replicate the feat of these little laying machines. The mind boggles at the thought. We certainly have a new appreciation and understanding for where at least some of our food comes from, and in this disconnected, pre-packaged, styrofoam-cartoned 21st century world of ours, that's a precious thing.

Anyway, while we're very sad to lose them, we're happy to report that the Saturday Morning Market kicks back up this weekend. If we're lucky, the egg vendor will return and we can continue to have a few better-than-grocery-store eggs from happy, free hens even without our backyard girls.

Alors, bonne chance et bonne vie, chers poulets, et merci bien!

Green Things

2009-09-15T18:54:00.010-04:00

Things are starting to look green in the backyard these days, as gardening gets off to a start here in the south. Remember my little cuke babies in the previous post? Two weeks later, they're looking pretty good. I'll call them cuke tweens, since they're thinking about going all hormonal and flowering, but haven't quite gotten there yet. This is our first year growing from seed only and, so far, I'm pretty pleased. It may take longer, but the cukes at least look much better than the ones that grew from Bonnie starts last year. I have also discovered that starting seeds in little pots is totally unnecessary in our climate. The peat pots just get moldy in our atmosphere, while seeds sown directly into the garden spring up in no time at all. More lessons learned—love it!

In addition to the garden plants, our currently-potted key lime tree (a gift from Jeff's parents) has lime babies on it! Three so far. Here's a game: can you find the two wee baby limes in the second key lime tree photo? It's just like the hidden picture puzzle in Highlights Magazine, only you don't have to go to an overly-cheery dentist's office and use the magazine to distract yourself from the bloody horror that awaits you beyond the giraffe-appliqued door. Such good times we had! Click to enlarge the photo if you're as blind as I am. No judgment.

Lots else going on here, including hours of studying by Jeff and Jared alike, and hours of puttering on my part. I have now been to two sewing classes and have successfully produced one French-seamed pillowcase (for Jared) and one fully functional tote bag (for me). Pleasing, to say the least, to produce something useful. I have always loved fabrics and am slowly working up to the ability to use them to make things. Very exciting! I can also see that a tight rein will need to be held on that enthusiasm, lest we drown in piles of expensive, unsewn fabrics here at the Handyhouse.

And speaking once again of plants, let a recent experience serve as a lesson to all of you who order flowers and living plants for others over the internet. Jeff's parents sent me a bonsai for my birthday. "Awesome," thought I, upon seeing the box. I've never had one and would delight in figuring out some freakish shape for it. Or not, as the case may be, since the shape it had already chosen was "Dessicated Greyish-Green Blob." I'm as postmodern as the next person, but this seemed a little too deconstructivist, even for me. Jeff's dear mother, however, upon hearing of this topiary travesty, laid down some Hoosier smack on the supplier for sending an already-dead plant. Honestly, I have no trouble killing them myself. They don't need to help. Lo and behold, a new starter bonsai arrived today. Here's a side-by-side comparison and a second game for you: spot the bad bonsai. Go on, see if you can tell!

What we did on our summer staycation

2009-08-27T08:06:00.017-04:00

Last week, Jeff and I took the week off together and stayed home and had a great time doing, well, stuff. Jeff read and studied and wrote and actually finished his current online college course a week in advance. This particular course crams 12 regular semester weeks into 7 or so, so that was quite an accomplishment. So proud! If you have questions about the progress of western civilization up to the time of the Renaissance, you now have your go-to guy. Other than that, it was mostly staying home and doing things in a fairly non-stressed way. The weather has been weird and wet and stiflingly hot, a typical August for Florida, I suppose, so I stayed out of our totally unkempt yard except for tending my tiny garden starts. Can you believe it's almost time to garden again here? Circle of life and all that.

I painted the bathroom red. Home Depot calls it "Chianti," and how I wish I had that paint-sample-naming job! Jeff gently pushed me away from the grey family and suggested red, and it looks great with the white and black tile in there.

I also, after almost three months, finished the refinishing of the front door.

And instead of painting the office, which I now know would have been a nightmare, we got rid of an inadequate low bookshelf and bought a larger one with glass doors from the fine folk at IKEA. Two hours of assembly and one trip back to Tampa to replace one teeny, tiny, totally crucial screw later, it looks great. Re-arranged some furniture, covered some magnetic boards with coordinating fabrics (yeah, I used duct tape, so what?), and now we have a much more balanced, if impossible to photograph, space.

What else? Let's see. I read 400 pages of this, which is the second in a series and quite good:

I cooked. Pork tenderloin with mushroom and Calvados cream sauce, New England fish chowder and my very first Tarte Tatin from Julia Child's recipe. I let it go about 45 seconds too long, but it wasn't nearly as burnt as this lousy photo implies. And the photo certainly doesn't tell you how it tasted, which was jaw-droppingly good. Flour, butter, sugar, apples. Four simple ingredients turned into pure deliciousness through the chemical alchemy brought on by heat. I never fail to be amazed by the everyday miracles we encounter and so often fail to appreciate. Sure sure, a guy landed a plane on a river and saved everyone or it rained frogs in Kansas, but have you tasted this??

We watched movies. "District 9" was excellent. "Milk" was quite good. "Watchmen" was a very disappointing bore of bores. And "Cosmos" always made an excellent background for my other major staycation project.

I knitted my very first sweater. No, really, a whole sweater, with sleeves that are four inches too long and everything! The whole thing is about a size too big, which goes to show that maybe you shouldn't guess how big your body is before you choose your knitting pattern variation. It's bulky but perfect for lounging around the house on a chilly day. Clearly, my seam-sewing needs some practice but, hey, I knitted an entire, wearable, non-embarrassing sweater! Another little everyday miracle.

I'm sure we did other things in our seven days together, but that rounds up the big stuff. Good times! Here's hoping everyone had a jolly and productive summer vacation, too. This weekend we're back to the school year pattern, and so it goes.

Virtual Realization

2009-07-29T14:20:00.006-04:00

Whillikers, it's been a while since I posted! It was a busy June and July, since we had Jared for six weeks straight this summer. Good times had by all, and Jared learned some great tips at fishing camp that he and Jeff should be able to put to good use. We also had a great time up at the Beckers' place in North Carolina! With all said and done, I can just say kudos to all full-time parents out there, because wow.

I confess I've also been spending time playing The Sims 3. It's fun, but it creates a certain obsessive behavior in me that can be very, very time-consuming. So much for quitting World of Warcraft, which I was rarely playing when I cancelled my subscription. I just replaced it with something I now play A LOT. Which leads to a recent realization: my virtual Sim people are leading more fulfilling lives than I am. Seriously, they cook, they garden, they play the guitar, they paint, they write, they work out, they go to the park and concerts and movies and the day spa, they chat and have friends over and flirt with their significant others and get appropriate amounts of sleep. They play video games, too, but they manage to get all of those other things done, as well. Thing is, I'm spending my time helping them do those many things instead of, oh, say, doing them myself. Doesn't that seem a bit...wrong? In fact, maybe a lot wrong?

Maybe it's the dog days of summer that were talking to me and telling me to take a break, but I'm now itching to do more. At the very least, I should give myself a real life at least as interesting as the one I encourage for my fake people. So, I'm back on the workout train after an overly long absence, thinking about freshening up the house with a repaint or two, am eagerly awaiting my seed shipment so I can get the garden up and running in August for the new growing year, plan to attend my first sewing class in a few weeks and may just have to suffer the fingertip pain and get the guitar back out. I swear, if I don't learn to play at least some chords and a simple song this year, I'm putting it on Craigslist on January 1. We've had them sitting there for at least three years, which is at least two years over the edge of reasonable learning delay. Use it or lose it, at least as far as my own guitar of the three that we have is concerned.

So, thanks, Sims, for reminding me how life ought to be lived. Video games are fine, but not at the expense of my own existence. Life is good, but it's also short.

Modest Results

2009-04-24T18:14:00.004-04:00

We're coming to the end of the main growing season here in Florida and can report a year of a few modest successes, some baffling disappointments and some lessons learned. Setting up the garden, along with the chickens, took a significant investment of time and capital, but the infrastructure is something that won't need to be repeated in the future. Knowing what I know now, would I have done things a little differently? Most certainly! A few of our boxes aren't in the optimal place, we still lack a box deep enough for carrots and other root vegetables, and the blueberry plants are certainly showing a preference for a slightly shadier spot. That said, things haven't gone too badly, all in all. Many of our early frustrations were related more to the chickens and their incessant desire to eat everything in sight, a situation we remedied with a permanent coop last month. Another frustration--small plants that wouldn't fruit--may have been related to our use of city water. We've switched to well water and rain water exclusively, now, and that seems to have improved things, but I'm not sure. Well water may also be the reason that our plants are dying early. Or is it too much sun? Not enough compost? An excess of squirrel poop? Bad vibes? Venus is transiting Cassiopeia? Frankly, there are so many factors that my head swims just thinking about it!

Still and all, we've had some nice produce this year. After years of planting the odd tomato only to see it fail, this is the first time I've gotten to eat fresh tomatoes from my own garden, and they're good! Given how expensive tomatoes are these days, I think we'll break even on the investment in the seedlings. Next year I'll be attempting to grow them from seed as a cost-saving measure, so that should be interesting. Our lettuce performed very well for the second year in a row; we definitely came out ahead there and I estimate that we saved about $30 growing our own (plus, the chickens get all the bad bits, so free feed there). Our cabbages were small but delicious. We saved a few dollars there and have bags of it the freezer for future meals. Chinese cabbage was even more successful, and if you need some I have bags of the stuff! Luckily it keeps and freezes. We harvested seven small broccoli heads, which wasn't too bad for nine plants. Again, the leaves and stems went to the girls to become eggs, so it's an extra win for plants like that. Onions that we planted on a whim are growing nicely, much to my surprise. Peppers of all kinds are growing like crazy. Too bad I hate them! Well, Jeff's happy and it looks like we'll have enough cayenne to dry and grind our own red pepper. Swell! Our English peas are looking iffy--another victim of unexplained early death. Zucchini, squash, cucumbers, cauliflower and a few other things were all losers this year. Maybe next year! Pretty soon I'll be digging the remains and planting our only summer options--beans and cantaloupes--and I have one watermelon vine still living. Pretty low expectations for those, but as I've learned when it comes to gardening, you never really know!

My Wandering Attention

2009-04-14T19:58:00.000-04:00

Green living, gardening, astronomy, chicken rearing, knitting, Celtic history, hydrogen energy, baking, the Tudors. Well, it just seems obvious that this list would lead to my latest point of attention, which is . . . Steampunk, naturally. I've poked around it for some time, but I confess to a recent explosion of fascination with it. It combines my love of the Dickensian era, the brutal elegance of machines and old industry, ornate design, and science fiction and fantasy in a quite wonderful, almost irresistible way. It's fascinating to posit an alternate timeline that could exist if this invention had had more attention, or that one had come along at a different time. Thinking about it makes one realize how interconnected and accidental our own timeline really is.

Also, the style and artwork from this particular subculture is just delicious. Think "Golden Compass" combined with "Myst" and "The Prestige" peppered with the more curious curiosities of "Antiques Roadshow" topped with Johnny Depp's bowler from the very dark and drear "From Hell." Now add a fanciful flight jacket from an imagined AeroCorps of steam-and-sail zeppelins, a mysterious gasworks, a giant Tesla Coil and gorgeous nineteenth-century penmanship on a copper-infused calling card. Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm in alt-history heaven right there! If you see anything out there in the interwebs or art world that sounds like this, please do send it on. In the meantime, the ladies can have interactive fun with this little Steampunk costuming link: Clockwork Couture

I suppose the men can have fun there, too. Naughty!

And if anyone is at all inclined, I would very, very much like to have one of these Steampunked laptops. My goodness, who wouldn't?

I promise I'll get back to posting about our garden and our new chicken coop soon, but this is so much more interesting than cabbages at the moment!

Recipe Basics Sheet

2009-03-29T17:25:00.004-04:00

One of my goals for 2009 was the creation of a "Recipe Basics Sheet," the model for which came from the Angry Chicken blog (link to the left over there). This is a single cheat-sheet with 11 recipes that I make fairly often. I know generally how to make them, but the exact ingredients or oven temps and times may get jumbled in my tiny brain. I'm sure it will undergo many changes over time, but it's nice to have a start on being more efficient in the kitchen.

I'll be posting some pictures of the garden as soon as it turns sunny again. This weekend's crazy wind was a killer, but most everything survived intact. The pea plants and zucchini are flowering, there must be 5 dozen different tomatoes working, and we have our first cucumber babies! This is my third or forth time planting cukes but the first time to ever get an actual cucumber on the vine. Very exciting here in Florida's prime growing months.

Happy spring! As always, click on the pic if you want to see a larger version.

Freedom Gardeners Site

2009-02-16T08:33:00.004-05:00

Freedom Gardeners is an online community group of people trying to do more with growing their own food and being more self-sufficient. It's a nice way to get in touch with others and get advice. You can see our profile as a way to enter the site--just click on the title of this post.

Netting is Annoying!

2009-02-15T14:44:00.005-05:00

And did I mention how annoying the netting is? In addition to getting caught on anything and everything, it also catches things, too. In December we discovered a gigantic black racer that had wriggled through the netting until it had gotten itself completely caught. We thought it was dead until Jeff touched it. NOT DEAD. Nevertheless, Jeff very carefully cut the snake out of the netting using a tiny pair of scissors while the snake at first wrapped around his wrist and then tried to bite him multiple times. Well, there's the wonder of nature for you! With the last snip the snake shot off under the fence to our neighbor's yard, so all was well that ended well.

But that netting is damned annoying. Any ideas out there?

Click to see Jeff in all of his Marlin Perkins glory (no, not dating myself at all there with that reference!).

The Green of Change

2009-02-15T14:10:00.011-05:00

I don't think I've ever before appreciated how cool gardening is. Sure, it's nice to put things in the ground and get useful or beautiful plants as a result, but being witness to the process of growth is really amazing. It's hard to fathom day to day how much a seemingly simple little plant can change. From barren dirt to two little seed leaves and a stem poking out of the ground, new branches on a tomato plant coming from seemingly nowhere, leaves on the lettuce plants puffing out where I had just picked off older leaves 48 hours beforehand. And they do all of this, endlessly, with no more than the four elements. Clearly, our ancestors were on to something when they called out Earth, Air, Water and Fire as the most essential building blocks of life. Plants bear out their testimony in the most remarkable ways. It's really quite a privilege to see it, especially in a society where we are increasingly divorced from the natural world.

Today, we harvested our first edible head of broccoli. This is our second attempt at broccoli after our crazy chickens wiped out the first batch in a single day at their own personal broccoli buffet. The cucumbers are just sprouting (my first experiment growing directly from seed), the lettuce is going crazy in our beautiful weather, we have nine or ten types of tomatoes in the ground (c'mon bees, show up this time!) and yesterday I noticed that all eight blueberry bushes have tiny berry buds nestled in their leaves, which are still flashing their autumn/winter shades of rusty red. The blueberry bushes are still very small, but they've all survived and look determined to fruit at least a little bit. I'm hoping to nurse them along to full size this spring.

The girls are still happy little hens, it seems, and are back on a pretty regular laying schedule now that they're done molting and the days are getting longer. I expect we'll see an even greater output with the increasing sunshine. They're still noisy, but no neighbor complaints so far. It's amazing how much goodwill a handful of beautiful, sage-colored eggs can buy you. The chickens would be quieter if we let them have at the garden to stuff themselves, but we've draped everything in a fine bird netting that keeps them out. They are not shy about voicing their displeasure. Every. Single. Morning. The netting is terribly annoying stuff but will do until we figure out how to enclose the whole area in something more workable. One project at a time!

Next on the list--planting our last box with delicious tidbits, pulling out some old plants and replanting with spring veggies and hooking up the rain barrel. Oh, for two weeks off!

As always, click the photos for larger versions!

Out with the Old

2009-01-21T11:14:00.005-05:00

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

Just a bit of President Obama's inauguration speech that I personally found inspiring. I can't see how anyone committed to the idea and ideals of a free, just and prosperous America could disagree, no matter what their personal affiliation or identification might be.

What else is there to say?

2008-11-05T12:32:00.005-05:00

Tidbits

2008-10-09T21:10:00.009-04:00

First, have you read "In Defense of Food," the latest book by Michael Pollan? If you haven't, get thee to your local library and do so as soon as possible. It's a very readable and very remarkable indictment of the American food industry and the rise of the "nutritionism" pseudoscience. Interesting stuff that will definitely make you think differently about what we eat, why we eat it and how we probably should be eating. Suffice it to say, many of us are doing it wrong. I was fascinated and inspired.

Speaking of fascinated and inspired, another book that I actually bought is Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian." Now, I'm not a vegetarian and neither is Jeff, but I confess that having two living, breathing chickens walking around the backyard makes me look rather differently at the meat on the plate. Coupled with Pollan's summary maxim--"Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."--and the general idea that less meat might be more for both me and the planet, more forays into the world of vegetarian cooking can't be a bad thing. This particular cookbook is filled with great, easy recipes and a lot of "base recipes" with multiple variation, like 13 ways to do vegetarian/bean burgers or Asian noodle dishes. I can vouch for the deliciousness of the basic veggie burger recipe, which is saying a lot since I usually find them akin to a soggy piece of cardboard recently used by a homeless gentleman as a sleeping accommodation. I highly recommend this one and will be adding some of the recipes to the family cookbook if I EVER get around to sending out an update. I know I'm behind!

And, being more environmentally aware here at the HandyHouse means occasionally trying something that seems totally out there. This week's experiment? Using apple cider vinegar (1 Tbsp diluted in one cup of plain old tap water) as, of all things, hair conditioner. Theoretically, it was supposed to make my hair soft and shiny and ever so nice. But, anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of hair. Very thick, very tangly hair that has never been without the smoothing joys of hair conditioner since I stopped using Johnson & Johnson's No More Tears as a wee babe. But, thought I, what the hey? What's the worst thing that could happen? Well, the worst thing that happened was . . . my hair came out soft and shiny and ever so nice. I swear, it worked like a charm! Don't ask me how or why, for the science of pH balancing is well beyond my puny brain, but it totally, totally worked. Try it! Just use the formula above, rinse about a cup of the mix through your hair and rinse it out. I'm curious to know your results if you do. That said, I take no responsibility for more interesting results than the ones I experienced. I'm just the eco-messenger here!

We're certainly experiencing interesting times these days, but I like to remember these words from the Dalai Lama:
"It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others."

Here's hoping we all have the chance to recognize and embrace our potential.

An Amazing Patent

2008-10-01T18:34:00.001-04:00

The patent has finally gone public, so now I can tell you what Jeff and I have been helping Neil McCanney, my mom's husband, do for the last three years or so. Neil has come up with a totally innovative engine/power plant that produces hydrogen on-demand from plain old water as it's working to power a car, a boat, your house, whatever.

Why is this innovative? Well, you can read more about it by clicking on the title of this post (in the "Press" section of the site, there are links to a press release and Q&A that I wrote about it), but, in summary, it solves the so-far insurmountable issues of hydrogen production and storage, both of which have totally stymied the use of hydrogen as a widespread alternative fuel source. That's pretty amazing right there. Neil's engine requires a small amount of gasoline/diesel to create the heat needed for the reaction, but the end result is a drastic reduction in CO2 pollution and the equivalent of 250-400 miles per gallon. Crazy! Even cooler is the fact that the invention consists of parts that are available right now. People are talking about alternative energy technologies being available in 10 years or 20 or 30 (or when it's far too late?). Why not 2 or 3 years? It's doable, so let's do it already.

It's been a huge challenge for all of us to get the invention this far. Now we're on the hunt for both funding and publicity so we can actually create the thing. Given that none of us have done this before, this is proving to be no small task. Just try getting the attention of anyone in Washington during an election year. While candidates make endless noise about green revolutions and alternative energy, people knocking at their doors with practicable ideas can't get anyone to listen. Frustrating to say the least. Still, we're persevering. For me, it's not only a chance to be part of a solution to our own energy crisis here in America, but, more importantly, a chance to provide technology to a rapidly developing world that deserves to advance but could be spared the same mistakes we've so tragically made. To put the entire planet on a road to sustainable development in a way that shares resources in a far more equitable manner rather than forcing people to squabble and bleed for them? That's a project I'm willing to spend my time and energy pursuing. It's the just thing to do.

So, if anyone reading this happens to know a venture capitalist or agency interested in economic and social justice through energy independence, let me know. In the meantime, send out some positive energy, alternative or otherwise, please!

Cuddly Little Killing Machines!

2008-09-14T12:32:00.003-04:00

Isn't that raccoon cute? Sure, they're downright adorable . . . until you find one trying to eat your poor chickens in the middle of the night, as one of these little blighters did. At 3:00 a.m. we were woken by the sound of the chickens doing the chicken version of panicked screaming. We ran outside to find a raccoon with a mouthful of feathers. It took off over the fence, leaving us freaking out in our jammies. We thought Lucy had been killed, but it seems like she was just playing dead or in shock (or both). Ethel was shocked, as well, but they both appear to be otherwise unharmed. I can't blame the raccoon; it's just doing what raccoons do. Upsetting for all concerned, to say the least.

I think in addition to running for their lives, the fact that both chickens are moulting--that is, losing all their feathers and growing nice, new ones--saved their lives. Judging by the clumps of feathers all over the yard, every time the raccoon got a hold on one of them, their feathers just came right out, leaving our little thief holding nothing but pillow stuffing. Well timed, my feathered friends, well timed indeed.

Needless to say, we fortified the chicken run and are now locking the girls in at night. They're not thrilled but they're also not straying from the coop as much as they used to. It's always an adventure in the backyard! Luckily, this adventure turned out okay.

Florida's Gardening Quirks

2008-09-08T11:32:00.003-04:00

Our backyard Square Foot Gardening experiment is underway! Jeff and I have built six 4'x4' boxes and installed them in the yard area next to the deck that was once home to our rotten, never-used picnic table. So far, we have managed to fill four of the boxes with the custom mix of compost, peat and vermiculite recommended for the SFG method. Here's hoping it helps retain moisture in our killer climate. We're also topping up our original 3'x8' garden box with that mixture. Altogether, these seven boxes will give us 120 planting "squares." Wow, what do with all of that? That's the fun part!

Since many of our family and friends are in more northerly climes, and because most people in Florida don't have a clue about gardening in our climate, I'm including a little chart here that I assembled so we would know what should be planted when for central Florida. It's weird! Our schedule is the complete opposite of everything one might come to expect from a lifetime of PBS gardening shows and illicit book and magazine browsing in the stands of Barnes & Noble. It's strange to be so "off" from the cultural norm, but adventuresome too. In the next ten days, I expect to be putting down our second round of tomatoes (which will hopefully be more productive than the first), cucumbers, eggplant, broccoli, chile peppers and the first bits of lettuce, plus a re-do of our sadly neglected herb pots. Wish us luck!

Chooks!

2008-05-22T08:30:00.006-04:00

Meet Lucy and Ethel, our two new chickens. Lucy is the larger and bossier redhead—definitely the top of the now-literal pecking order. Ethel is shy but, I think, quicker on the uptake. I guess our randomly selected names were more appropriate than we expected! They seem perfectly contented to walk around the backyard, scratch up everything, eat bugs, poop and lay beautiful, sage-colored eggs (six eggs in three days so far). Jeff's sister Chris helped us identify their breed, Americauna or "the Easter Egg chicken." They're silly and relatively well-behaved, although I learned this morning that they will let you know if you're late with the breakfast. Well, fair enough. I'd be mad, too!

As always, click on the pic if you'd like to see a larger version. Their feathers are remarkable and beautiful constructions. Go, keratin!

Step by step

2008-04-30T16:33:00.004-04:00

Eight "Sunshine Blue" blueberry plants were planted in raised bed boxes over the weekend, our fence is repaired, our current garden box is still pumping out veggies, one-third of our path is constructed (helping to clear the area where our garden will go), the clothes are consistently on the line, I'm back on my bike to work more than ever before, lots of research is being done and we're about to start building a cardboard prototype of our chicken coop.

The world keeps changing and so are we. More adventures await!

That Thing I Do

2008-03-06T16:10:00.007-05:00

The installation of the "Amazing Bodies" life science exhibition in Amarillo, Texas, is complete! I am quite pleased with how this one came out, I have to say. The activities are fun and informative, and the large-scale graphics turned out beautifully. For those of you who don't really know what I do, imagine a big empty room with boring grey carpet and white walls and then look at this picture. What I do, with my cute little teammates, is research the client's chosen exhibition topic to the nth degree, then figure out what content can be turned into cool ideas that people can actually touch and do--basically, we come up with the idea behind every single exhibit that goes in that boring white and grey room. Then, the design team here turns those ideas into "things" that can be fabricated. While all that is happening, it's my job to write interesting words for all of those exhibits using the research that we've gathered and to work with the graphic designers to come up with a label that has all that information in it. A lot of times, that also includes me researching endless photos to find that one special cow or lung X-ray or jumproping child that we want to put on that label (since we know better than the graphic designer what exact type of cow, lung or child we would like to see on that label). I also help develop any multimedia programs and find videos and sounds for any exhibits that have media in them.

And then, while I'm doing that, I set and follow where the project budget is going, set the schedules, track the project's progress and keep it moving, and communicate with the client to get their approvals as we go along. But that's all. :-)

I'll be going out to Amarillo in mid-April to do a photo shoot of the exhibit, so I should get some better photos of it. It's the first time I've ever had to handle one of our photo shoots, so that should be loads of fun. Even more exciting is the chance to see the exhibition first-hand. I spend, on average, two years of my life working on a project, but I've only been to about half of the finished exhibitions. I'm usually too busy working on the next one to go!

And what's next, you ask? Well, now that I've wrapped up a life sciences exhibition along with a small ecology exhibit about the cypress-tupelo swamps of Louisiana and East Texas, I've moved on to a project about the maritime history of the Gulf of Mexico. That's a new one! But I now know how to find my longitude and latitude if I'm ever stranded in the middle of the Gulf with a boatload of nineteenth-century navigation tools. Life is good!

By the by, that activity in the picture asks people to try to match the heartbeat rate of a dog, human and cow. It's harder than you think! And we had to track down real, plastinated hearts of all those critters, which you can see in the windows there.

For No Reason Whatsoever

2008-03-02T10:30:00.007-05:00

How cute are these guys? Sickening!

How Does Our Garden Grow

2008-03-02T09:55:00.011-05:00

Apologies to all those in more northern climes, but check out our garden box! This was shot today, March 2. Last summer's box failed pretty miserably after my post about it. Not only did the corn fall to pests, but so did everything else in a matter of about 30 hours. It was a sad state of affairs, and the weather became too hot to replant anything. This year, I tried planting earlier—in January—hoping for better results. I hit it right for the lettuces, herbs, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, I think, but too late for broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. The cauliflower and cabbage plants are growing but aren't producing anything; the broccoli hasn't moved at all. Next time, I'll plant all three of those in October. Still, I've already harvested off the lettuces three times and they just keep shooting out more leaves. Hurrah!

All of this has continued to spur my thinking about gardening & "smallholding" within the suburban landscape. Why, exactly, do we have this cultural obsession with grassy yards that do absolutely nothing but demand attention, water and chemicals? The days of the Victory Garden are long gone but not that far away. I would love to see a rejuvenation of the idea that anyone, no matter where they live, can grow some of their own food. I'm personally surprised by how little time it takes to look after things that grow themselves. Granted, our scale is small indeed, but the results are larger than I expected them to be given the amount of time I spend on it.

I'm now thinking what else we could do, including ripping out the scraggly plants along our fence in the backyard and replanting them with either bananas or blueberries (or both!). Did you know Florida is now a major supplier of blueberries? I'm looking at a species called "Sunshine Blue" as a possibility. It's a dwarf with the lowest amount of "chill hours" required to create delicious fruit—a nice plus in a state that completely missed winter this year. I'm not sure what else we might do here, but a call to the Cooperative Extension Service is next on my list. Maybe they can help!

And my idea of installing a few chickens in the backyard continues unabated. I'm just waiting to get a larger plan in place before jumping into anything as major as that. In the meantime, I can enjoy the chicken flock (complete with illegal rooster) that some construction worker is raising on a work site next to my office's parking lot. Go, urban farmer, whoever you are!

Back from Beyond

2008-03-02T08:36:00.011-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time since we checked in here at the HandyHouse. So much for best intentions, eh? A few things have happened since October, including a little trip to Paris that Jeff and I took the first week in November. It was fantastic, not in small part because we managed to squeeze it in between two major transit strikes that brought Paris to a standstill in mid-October and mid-November. If the French love anything as well as they love wine and fine food, it's a chance to protest.

We're very happy to report, however, that we had an absolutely wonderful time. Although a bit cold and rainy, November is a great month to visit this very popular city, since the crowds are much smaller and the cost of lodging is significantly cheaper. As has always been my experience in the past, everyone we met was very kind and helpful. I'm sure it didn't hurt that we always tried to speak French; Jeff had downloaded some great podcasts that helped him learn some and helped me remember a lot of what I forgotten from school. Like any people would, I think the French appreciate it when you at least make an effort, and it made our experience far more enjoyable and challenging.

Our apartment was cute and really well located, with a nice market at one end of the street and Notre Dame at the other, although I'm somewhat convinced that I got a few bedbug bites in our sleeping loft. Ew! Still, when your view is a gorgeous garden in autumnal splendor, it's hard to complain too much.

Since this was Jeff's first trip to Paris, we focused on seeing the "big things," including the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Montmartre and the Orangerie, where Monet's "Water Lilies" paintings are housed in two custom-built, sunlit galleries. I had never been there before, and it was probably my favorite museum of the bunch. In addition to the Monet works, they had a small but lovely collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. It was just the right size to feel comfortable and allow us to really spend time looking at them. The larger museums are packed with wonders, to be sure, but their massiveness does create a sense of "work" that's a bit unfortunate and exhausting. We had "Paris Passes" that gave us entry to all the museums as much as we wanted for the entire week, which allowed us to visit the Louvre three times. We still saw only a fraction of what it offered! We didn't have time to do everything we had hoped, but Jeff is now "caught up" with most of my previous experiences in Paris, meaning that our next visit there will allow us to do more exploring off the beaten paths, including a descent into the Catacombs, I hope. We can't wait to go back!

We have hundreds of photos that still need labeling. As soon as that's done, we'll post an address to the online gallery and you can browse them at your leisure.

Gooooooooooooooooooooooal!

2007-10-05T07:47:00.001-04:00

Jared has joined the Sarasota United Soccer League for his first official team sports experience. He's on the inspirationally named "Team Four" of the recreational league, and will be having a soccer game every weekend through mid-December. We're so excited he has this opportunity to play soccer, something he has wanted to do for the last three years. Go, Jared! Last week, we attended a fundraiser for the league, and Jeff videotaped the whole thing. He's now editing all that down into a two or three-minute promo film for the league, pro bono of course. Go, Jeff!

(As always, you can click on the picture to see it larger. Such a handsome team! And at least they didn't get the ugly uniforms. Some of them were, well, shudderable.)

The Treeman Cometh

2007-10-04T16:40:00.000-04:00

Well, we finally had to call the treeman to come and prune the yard when large chunks of our dead cedar started falling off and smashing into the roof. Whoops! In addition to that and massive trimming of all our trees, I'm sorry to say we also had to remove the large water oak growing right next to the house. The new treeman confirmed the message that another treeman gave me five years ago--it was doomed, and the fall of 35 feet of oak would crush the house, if not kill someone. So, we bit the bullet and had it taken out. Looking at the trunk sections, it's quite clear the treemen knew what they were talking about, as it seems to have suffered from something called "heart rot." The entire center of the trunk was black, icky and so soft you could spoon it out. It surely would have broken in any serious storm.

Still, dear funky deformed tree with the crazy crossing branches, I'm so sad we had to cut you down, and I'll miss you and your shading beauty terribly. I know the squirrels will miss you, too. Thank you for being a tree!

Paris redux

2007-08-24T06:55:00.002-04:00

We decided to cancel the apartment we had. It was pretty far away from the heart of Paris. So, we reserved another apartment which is very near Notre Dame. And it looks out into a pretty park. Neat! Have a look.

http://www.apartexchange.com/Paris/paris_apts.php?referenceno=5026

Knitting Success!

2007-07-23T20:00:00.000-04:00

Just a very quick update on the Dulaan Project. The official tally of contributions was an amazing 17,376 pieces for donation to the people of Mongolia. I don't know about you, but that's some serious evidence of the power of the internet, which is how most of the contributions came to be. Yarn love to all!

And Did I Forget to Mention...

2007-06-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

We have picked out our apartment in Paris! There were a few that we loved that were already booked (six months in advance!), but Jeff kept searching and found a great little place near the Montmartre area. I've never stayed in this area before, so it will be an exciting adventure into the unknown for both of us. We've downloaded several podcasts for learning French, so we should be able to get by. It's amazing how much I've forgotten, but bits and pieces are coming back. All in the wrong order, of course. C'est la vie!

You can see the place here:
Cozy Carpeaux

Dulaan Update

2007-06-19T22:52:00.000-04:00

Almost forgot to add that I have finished my parcel of charity knitting for the Dulaan Project, items for which have to be delivered prior to July 1 (I guess mailing to Mongolia takes a while!). I wanted to do five pieces and, lo and behold, five there are! I made four scarves and my very first hat--pretty keen. Everything after this point will go to local charities. It's fun, however, to think that something I made will be used halfway across the world. If this keeps up, I'll have to get one of those maps to put pins in. Think warm thoughts!

Done and Doing

2007-06-16T09:44:00.000-04:00

Whew! Since the last post, we've been doing a lot here at the HandyHouse. The garden continues to grow, although erratically. There are watermelon vines all over the place, the corn has basically come to a standstill after an attack of some kind of caterpillar, the cucumber vines are growing and flowering but not fruiting (yet), and the bush beans are making a valiant effort. Those beans in the picture are ours. It's pretty exciting to see an end result to the effort, meager though this first product may be. I've had far less tasty outcomes to some of my past "experiments," so I can only be happy with the results so far.

Jeff started a "Couch to 5K" running program and has already completed his very first charity 5K, weeks before actually completing the program. The funds from the race are going to a new playground that will have complete access for disabled children. Check out his finish line photo--fantastically photogenic that man.

We also pulled out the scuba gear a few weeks ago and went diving in the Gulf. This was my first dive in my own backyard, amazingly enough, and it turned out to be the best dive we've ever experienced. Who knew! We visited a sunken barge named the R.J. Thompson (in the picture) and went to a strange outcrop called Table Rock, which pokes up in the middle of a sandy bottomed nowhere. Fish everywhere, a nurse shark, barracuda, all kinds of corals and sponges, and very clear water. I had no idea the Gulf could be like that. Nice to know we don't have to travel for days to enjoy the amazing beauty under the sea. I also learned that no matter what I do, I'm going to be seasick. Too bad!

See, you'd think that "seasick" would be the tip-off to avoid our next accomplishment, but no. Jeff and I signed up with the St. Pete Sailing Center and learned to sail keelboats! Check one off the "Life List." These are traditional, non-motorized sailboats (in our case, the Rhodes 19' sailboat like the ones in this picture). We took a weekend course, and then took a boat out ourselves the following weekend. It's a lot of fun, but more work than you'd think given how serene the boats look when you're standing on the shore and watching them float on by. Everything seems to need constant adjusting and tweaking and tacking and jibing and hauling in and out. Whew! Still, it's a good time, and we look forward to going out more. Part of the Sailing Center membership includes use of their boats when you please (and they're not being used for classes or races), so that's pretty swell--all the fun of boating with none of those pesky upkeep expenses. Just something to keep in mind for those folks who might want to visit and, oh, say, go out on a boat in grand Florida tradition. We promise not to sink you (intentionally).

That's it for the moment. Summer break with Jared starts in just a few days, which means a flurry of camp activity and a trip up north. We're looking forward to checking in with the Hoosier side of the family! Love to all.

Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round

2007-05-18T15:03:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to remind everyone that today is National Bike to Work Day. In honor of the event, I did! This is the second time I've managed it in a month, but I'll be making an effort to get off my duff and do this more. The trip takes about 12 minutes from our garage door to the gate of my office building. Considering that it takes me 6-8 minutes to drive, that's kind of amazing. Of course, it's going to get mighty hot and rainy here soon, but I'll do it as long as I can stand it in the hopes that some meager bike commuting habit gets established by the time it cools off again.

Happy biking!

Going Green!

2007-05-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

This time I mean "going green" quite literally! Through a team effort we have finally accomplished something I have long wanted to do, build a raised garden box to compensate for the truly terrible quality of our sandy soil. Jeff and Jared built the 3' x 8' box using spare wood that has been up in the garage loft since before I bought the house. We filled it with a mix of Miracle Gro's new organic garden soil and some mercifully unsmelly cow poop. I laid down a string grid to create 24 foot-square boxes to organize the planting, then in went the seedlings that Jared and I had planted weeks ago from some Seeds of Change seeds (there's a link to the left over there). As a result, we are now growing heirloom sweet corn, watermelons, bush beans, chili peppers, carrots and cucumbers. Two of the five bean seedlings have since died (I think squirrels sat on them), so I'm going to replace them with Italian white eggplants. I also replanted all of my sadly neglected herb pots. We are now swimming in basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, marjoram, two types of parsley and cilantro. This is all just experimenting, really, as I know very little about gardening except that I'm starting about two months late for Florida's growing zone. But what they hey! It's worth a try, especially since our farm co-op is shutting down for the summer. We will keep you posted on the progress, including photos.

In other news, we are heading down to visit Valerie and her family this weekend. This is our last weekend with Jared before we get him for summer break at the end of June. In addition to two weeks of fun in Indiana (which Jeff and I will also be enjoying for a week), we have Jared signed up for a week at each of four different camps--a soccer camp, a traditional summer camp called Camp Frontier, an outdoor "sea scientist" program at the Pier Aquarium, and Busch Gardens for animals and fun. Hopefully, Jeff and I can get in some diving on those free weekends in June. We haven't suited up since November! So very sad.

Hope everyone is spectacularly well. Eat your veggies!

Crafty On Purpose

2007-04-27T09:24:00.000-04:00

So last year I took up knitting. I enjoy it a lot but I'm currently only capable of doing the most basic stitches. It takes practice, but honestly, how many scarves (or hats, mittens or potholders) does a family in Florida actually need? The answer is, of course, not many. However, there are plenty of people on our little planet that could use a scarf. Or a hat. Or mittens. Or a blanket. A little googling led me to several resources for knitting for charity that I thought I would share for the crafty amongst us. The projects are very simple—simple enough for children, in fact, which means that I might just be able to handle it too.

Here's one:
www.warmupamerica.org/home.html

And here's another one:
www.fireprojects.org/dulaan.htm

And here's a whole bunch:
www.knittingforcharity.org

You can also call your local shelters and hospitals and see if they accept donations. There are so many small things you can do to help people out and spread a little loving kindness and compassion. Isn't it awesome?

Making Changes

2007-04-25T16:48:00.000-04:00

Spring is here, the breezes are blowing, and I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather be anywhere than sitting in an office, even one that has a great big window that opens (causing my office workers to complain bitterly that the temperature has risen above 70 degrees and it's "too hot").

Spring is also that great time when fresh ideas and the desire to do things differently seems to be, well, springing forth at the HandyHouse. Words like "energy," "saving," and "living more with less" seem to be on our minds these days. I sometimes think they should be on everyone's minds more often, but who am I—or anyone, for that matter—to preach without practicing, eh? To that end, Jeff and I have been making some changes. Small steps, to be sure, but steps nonetheless to see what we can do to reduce our impact on this here planet, help reshape the way things work and still live shiny, happy, modern lives. There are so many things we can change about the way we live, the question arises—where to start?

Here's the first spring thing we've done: "replanted" just about every light bulb in our house with compact fluorescent bulbs. At first I was resistant because, ew, office light! But CF bulbs for the home have come a long way in recent years, and having lived with them for a few months now, I can honestly say it doesn't bother me at all. We changed all bulbs except for a few that are on dimmers (haven't found a good, dimmable CF that doesn't buzz) and the bulbs in the bathrooms. I may change those, too, but I wanted to see how I felt about the lights before going whole hog. We discovered that you have to choose your bulbs carefully. We first tried the GE bulbs (got them at Lowe's), but we found their light really unpleasant. I did some research about lumens and other techie things and then we chose the N:Vision bulbs at Home Depot. Love them! And they were fairly inexpensive, to boot. We did the entire house for about $70, and have already seen a drop in our electric bill of about 15% over last year. They will easily pay for themselves in less than a year and then just keep on saving from there. Try it!

Here's another little thing I'm doing, and it seems entirely stupid and obvious, but . . . I'm hanging clothes on our clothesline when I can (right now, it's about 2 out of 3 loads). Gasp! It's ridiculous, isn't it? We live in Florida, the SUNSHINE STATE, for pete's sake, and I am only now taking advantage of all that free energy. The sad thing is I had to make a conscious decision to do it. When did it stop becoming the thing you did automatically? I wonder. Right now, I can't quite buy the idea that it's because dryers are so much more convenient, at least in Florida. It takes, quite literally, 4 minutes to put the clothes up and 4 minutes a few hours later to take them down. I figure that's a savings of about 5 minutes over dealing with the dryer. What am I going to do with 5 minutes, anyway? Watch TV? Write that novel? It's funny how this bright spring weather is making me shift my perceptions about things like "convenience" that I typically never think about. Anyway, you can now see our springtime fresh underthings waving in the wind in the backyard. Enjoy!

Welcome to the HandyHouse!

2007-04-24T18:22:00.000-04:00

One of my resolutions for 2007 was to stay in better contact with the family, and here it is coming on May and I realize that I have done a seriously lousy job so far. No good excuses, just the ongoing distractions of generalized busyness that seem to swallow each and every day. So! Here's an attempt to keep everyone somewhat up-to-date on what's happening here at the HandyHouse in St. Pete. I figure a quick thought here and there, a photo or two, some links to places of interest, the occasional joke, and there you go—a 100% improvement over the cone of silence!

So, check in from time to time, comment, tell a joke, hurl an insult, share bits about your own lives. The HandyHouse is always open!