How was your labor day weekend? Mine was stressful. We came home Friday night from a lovely accidental date at Yakuza. Service is so slow you wonder if they forgot about you, or maybe they're mad at you? Either way dinner lingers a long time and it's so dark that it feels very romantic. Greg and I got into a little pissing match about modern design and who knows more (me, always me) and we ate fantastic burgers. But then we got home and found this little guy in our side yard.
If you have any soul at all you are weeping right now. It was the saddest thing. I ransacked the cabinets for a can of tuna and pulled out a cardboard box and a blanket. She wolfed the tuna but didn't know what to do with the box. She sat on our back deck and looked at us through the screen door, mewling sadly at us.
"Heather, I don't want a cat. Stop looking at me like that." Greg is such a dude.
The next morning she seemed to have taken off. I was worried and kind of relieved. But then it turned out she was just in the side yard! I fed her more tuna and then she climbed up into my lap. She had on nothing but a flea collar but it was clear that she was someone's house cat. She was so sweet. On the advice of a friend I called Oregon Humane Society and left a message asking to set up a drop-off time for her. OHS is a no-kill shelter and I knew she'd get snapped up right away.
And I waited for a call. And I waited for a call. And the call never came. In the meantime, I asked Facebook and Twitter for ideas to rehome her and everyone was spectacularly unhelpful, instead telling me, "Yay, you have a kitteh!" Actually, Internet, we have this huge trip planned and we can't adopt a cat who may or may not be litter box-trained, and leave her in our empty house for two weeks. A friend even offered to kick in money for a kitty hotel while we're gone. But you know what kitties need before they go to a kennel? Innoculations and vaccinations and a whole host of documentation we don't have. It's kind of impossible for us to adopt right now.
I bought real cat food and spent hours scanning missing cat ads and calling people who sounded like they might be possible fits. I discovered that people are spectacularly bad at describing their pets: "cat-sized cat." "Calico-colored cat." "Wearing a collar unless it fell off." I spoke with a woman for about 15 minutes who had lost, then found her pet. We lamented how frustrating the county website is and she wept while she told me about losing, then finding, her cat. In the meantime our stray cat sat on our deck, not making any attempt to find her way home.
On Sunday I tricked the sweet cat (I'd begun calling her Stevie in my brain) into a carrier and took her down to Dove Lewis to see if she was microchipped. She bawled the entire way there. I have never heard such sad noises come from an animal and it was brutal. At Dove Lewis they scanned her and found no chip. Then the very sweet vet tech told me that OHS doesn't take stray cats, they only take owner surrenders. My only option was to take her to the county shelter (the one where 50% of cats are euthanized).
"The one that closed 30 minutes ago?"
"Uh huh."
"Is it closed on Labor Day?"
"Uh huh."
I burst into tears. I took poor Stevie home and released her back into the yard. I thought she would try to claw my eyes out for subjecting her to that, but instead she crawled into my lap again and fell asleep. I worried she'd starve while we were traveling, having grown accustomed (after two days!) to being fed by me. I worried she'd get attacked by a raccoon or another cat. Stevie is a lover not a fighter, you see. I finally put out a pathetic status on Facebook asking if anyone had room for her in their home, because otherwise she was going to the pound. My awesome librarian friend Steve wrote back two minutes later saying he might have someone. His friend wrote me almost immediately with her phone number and fifteen minutes later she was at our house, ready to foster Stevie. Apparently it can take months to get a cat into OHS so I'm hoping that maybe we can adopt her once we return from traveling. Greg doesn't want a pet, mostly because they make spontaneous travel impossible, but he said he'd give in if it was important to me.
He's a seriously good man, that one. And I hope he meant it because I think I might want to bring Stevie home. But I've never owned a cat before. They poop in your shoes and scratch up your furniture and try to suffocate you in your sleep, right? Someone scare me petless, please. Really.
This whole situation added to a few weeks of feeling like I'm failing at everything I attempt. Bringing a new meaning to Bad Idea Jeans, I tried to dye my jeans darker using this method and ended up with purple pants. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, especially when it's people telling you to use weedblock fabric in your landscaping. Seriously guys, don't use that stuff. Bad idea jeans, indeed.
I saw this tutorial in Better Homes and Gardens on how to create a picture frame planter full of sedums. It's amazing. I want one. I want an entire fence made of them. I want an entire HOUSE made of them and then I'll marry them and have a million of their babies.
I decided to check out Salvage Works in Kenton. They had lots of drawers that would have worked well but I got distracted by this rusted out wheelbarrow.
Conveniently, it has a hole blasted through the bottom, meaning I could turn it into a planter with good drainage.
I decided to sleep on it because I'm responsible. Also: I didn't have the keys to Greg's truck and it wouldn't fit in my Honda. I went back the next day and the owner had conveniently written the price on the handle in Sharpie. Except by "conveniently" I mean "stupidly." Anyone know how to get that off?
I ran to Lowe's in search of sedums even though they never have good succulents. I should have gone to Portland Nursery or Cistus. Actually, I should have cleaned the bathroom or otherwise prepared for my sister's impending visit instead of messing around in the yard. Lowe's only had some unremarkable hen-and-chicks so I grabbed more grosso lavendar. I figure this probably won't last the winter above ground so I'll have to replant next spring.
I've been blog-stalking danger garden recently and coveting all the pokey plants she has in her yard. This whole wheelbarrow setup is looking a little too precious and I'm thinking one of these babies would be more fun. Whale's tongue agave:
That's a little more unexpected, ya? I'm not sure how deeply it needs to be planted so I might have to go with something smaller. The wheelbarrow is only five inches deep. While I was garden shopping I bought some orange crocosmia for Greg (if baby wants orange plants, baby gets orange plants) and realized that this area of the yard is an even bigger mess than I thought.
Because I never really planned this area, so many things need to be removed or moved. There's a mountain of wild morning glory quietly weaving around every plant in the area. I pull that weed every time I find it and it always comes back. My neighbor, the one who thinks I hate her Doug Fir, has it growing with abandon in her yard, meaning I will never be able to fully eradicate it. Ultimately I want to move the blueberry bushes from this area to the front yard, but that requires removed the rhododendrons, amending the soil, and doing a whole bunch of stuff for which I'm not ready. So they sit in the ground, planted far too closely to their replacement shrubs. Beautyberry sits right next to a flowering currant, which sits right next to an elderberry. They all suffer for it. I've also got a few plants on death row. Sadly, they are natives.
This mock orange has been in the ground for two summers and has yet to flower. I have no place in my yard for shrubs that don't flower when their foliage is nothing to get excited about. I'm thinking about replacing it with a Mexican Orange, which is evergreen. This area desperately needs evergreen elements. I also want some goddamn flowers. Is that too much to ask?
Also not flowering? The nootka roses. They've thicketed like crazy, popping up in places I never wanted and they have yet to produce a single flower. If I'm going to put up with thorns there had better be some flowers. I'm not running a charity over here. Also? They've gotten so tall that I can't see the ninebark behind them. I'm thinking about removing them and planting something evergreen. Something chartreuse, maybe.
Also on death row? Whatever critter broke my birdbath. AGAIN.
Our back step had gone from being softly rotting to actively dangerous. If you didn't step exactly in the middle of the step the whole thing would cantilever over to the side and pitch you into the bushes. We eat outside every night and we both started to feel like we were tempting fate, having someone as clumsy as me going up and down it in semi-darkness, usually with my hands full.
My sister came this weekend and took fancypants pictures of my dried-out garden! We ate crawfish and relaxed in the backyard and drank too much champagne.
At one point she asked us, "Wait. You don't have kids. What do you DO all weekend?" And we were like, "Whatever we want. Nothing or a bunch of stuff." Actually, Sissy, this is what we do. We build franken-decks.
You'll want to remove the old rotting stairs, taking care to salvage the fern growing under them. You already have thirty ferns in the yard but that's not enough. Swear when a wasp comes flying out from underneath the deck. In case there's a nest under there, dig out the can of Raid from the basement. Put on a hoodie and gloves and watch as Greg arms himself with nothing but a hammer. Welding a hammer instead of protective clothing isn't stubborn at all, GREG. I'm sure that hammer will protect you against a swarm of stinging insects.
Ahem.
We're all good! There's no nest. There IS a pair of socks, a Pepsi bottle, a Ball jar, a broken coffee cup, a yogurt container (Yoplait strawberry), and a can of A&W cream soda. The former home owners were hungry and a little bit sloppy, apparently.
You know what else they were? Lazy. These posts aren't sunk into concrete. In fact, they aren't connected to the main platform in any meaningful way, they're just kind of wedged under there. Cheerfully remind each other than this is a stopgap measure, and that you're going to replace this whole deck next summer. Drive some extra nails into the posts.
Decide to use two of the old piers you found in the yard and two new piers, just to make the measurements more complicated. Start digging a hole and realize you didn't buy enough gravel, prompting your second trip to the Home Depot in less than an hour. Make sure to forget your phone! When you're en route and you're thinking, "He might need me to pick up something else, I should turn around and grab it," ignore that impulse. JUST KEEP DRIVING.
Get home and learn that you need a different kind of bracket. Head to Lowe's this time, just for variety. Take your goddamn phone this time, okay? Enjoy the fact that you're driving around in air conditioning while Greg is digging holes, tamping gravel, and measuring things in the blazing sun. This is kind of the best thing ever, actually. Get back just as he's finishing up the crossbeams for the new step.
Your timing is excellent.
Decide that you should actually help build this thing. Here baby, let me nail in the treads. Be sure to drift! Greg didn't labor all afternoon just to have you drive nails in a straight line. Also, don't pay attention to the boards moving out of line.
Decide to reclaim the facing board from the old rotting step, just to give it more of a shabby chic feel. Also: bragging rights. Oh, you bought new wood for your deck? We reclaimed wood from the old one because we actually care about the environment. Get an uncontrollable case of the giggles because it looks so franken-decky. That's okay though, because the new step is SOLID.
Eat so much chicken at dinner that you suspect Greg is wondering if you're pregnant. (dude. no.) Driving to the hardware store that many times and hauling bags of gravel is tiring! Never mind that he did most of the work.
Seriously though, I love doing home improvement projects with Greg. We always laugh a lot and there's nothing more satisfying than putting your arm around the man you love while looking at your completed project and thinking, "We built that fucked-up looking thing together."
Last night Greg and I were eating in the backyard on the someday-deck. I had that same feeling I think everyone gets in places where summer is very short. I grew up in California where summer basically lasts forever. It starts in March and can last well into October or November. There's no rushing to go camping or spend time outside because you can always do it next month. But in Portland summer is over almost as soon as it begins. I felt antsy and disappointed--we haven't kayaked this year! I haven't eaten a single artichoke! We haven't had a dinner party in the yard (though we had a barbecue and a birthday party). September has been swallowed up by travel plans, not that I'm complaining, but it shortens the summer even more. The only upshot to shortening days is an excuse to eat dinner by candlelight.
Then Greg admitted to me that he's been cheating. He's been looking at other houses online. "For someday, don't freak out!" he explained. Oh, for SOMEDAY! That makes me feels so much better that you've been secretly researching real estate! That doesn't make me nervous at all.
As an aside, does anyone understand that familiar plot in TV shows and movies where a dude, as a surprise to his lady love, buys a house for them? I would be livid if Greg did that, and we're not even married. You made a quarter million dollar investment (or more) and didn't bother to let me weigh in on it? I don't know if we'd ever recover from that. And how do you go through house hunting and escrow without letting anyone else know? Come on.
Anyway, our house isn't in a very walkable neighborhood. We have two grocery stores within a mile but we don't have any great bars or coffee shops or restaurants. In a city of forty thousand thai restaurants, we have none in walking distance. If you are drunk at two in the morning, however, we have the *best* taco shop. Greg lived in the NW 23rd area before I made him move into North Portland and we miss the walking options we had for eating out in that neighborhood. If I were to move I'd probably go no further than Kenton, which is a great little neighborhood about two miles away. They have a coffee shop, a library, a salvage shop, and a homebrew exchange. But Greg is plotting to get us back to his former stomping grounds, with its fancy shops and lack of street parking.
But! He admitted that every house he looked at paled in comparison to mine, mostly because they all had tiny yards. That's right, baby, you might think you can do better but no other house will love you like this one. We have room to spare and we're only five minutes from downtown. The whole thing makes me laugh because Greg always tells me how condo living is better, how he hates yard work, how he comes from a family of farmers and he's rebelled against his heritage by refusing to garden. And now he can't live without our enormous yard.
We're planning on bumping the fence out a ways toward the front of the house on the west side. Sometimes we say it's going to be a place for the compost bin. Sometimes we say it's going to be the hammock spot. Last night Greg said we should plant corn there because corn is delicious and also we could create a corn maze as an entrance to a Halloween party.
You guys, my plan to turn him into a North Portland home ownership-loving gardener is working! He wants to grow more vegetables AND he wants to create a corn maze entrance to a party! That's some Martha Stewart level awesome shit right there. I'm so proud.
We both agreed that we want to get the deck built early next summer, hopefully by May so we can spend the rest of the summer just enjoying it. And having dinner parties on it. Maybe kayaking on it. Definitely eating artichokes on it.
I awoke one Saturday morning and opened the curtains to greet the day. We settled back in bed with our coffee and watched the birds flying by and the squirrels frolicking on the lawn. One leaped onto the planter! So cute! He adorably reached into the planter with his little rat-hands and PLUCKED A STRAWBERRY OFF THE VINE.
Son of a bitch.
I ran out into the yard in my underwear and cursed that tiny animal out. He retreated to the fence where, I swear to god, he made a big show of eating my strawberry. Mmmm, so good! So juicy! Wouldn't you like one? Too bad it's in my belly and also covered in squirrel disease.
I know I got my yard certified by the Audubon Society and I love animals and all that, but lately I've had it with nature. Some critter recently ate every single blueberry on both bushes. The crows, in addition to being noisy as hell, like to divebomb me when I'm weeding. I keep finding neighborhood cats lurking in the back, which would be fine if they would eat the crows (circle of life and all that); instead, they just poop in my beds. My yard is not a goddamn gas station, guys. You can't just use the restroom and leave.
The boy found water pellet rifles online and offered to try his hand at controlling the crows. I won't let him . . . yet. Because last night I successfully harvested a bowl of strawberries and they tasted like victory.
1. I've been a little scattered lately, my weekends thrown off by the fact that the boy has been traveling for work a ton. Like, half of last month he was gone. So instead of getting my projects together, we're staying in bed until noon on weekends so we can catch each other up on our weeks. I think we finally decided that we're not going to build the deck this summer. It seems to make more sense to wait until we paint the house. Why would we paint the house when it looks so awesome in back? Yeah, I don't know.
2. We booked a trip to Amsterdam in the fall! THE ONE IN EUROPE, oh my god. I think we're going to hit Paris and Cinque Terre but please feel free to chime in with your favorite cities/sites/activities. I've never been to Europe and I can't wait to embarrass Greg by yelling loudly, "The LOOV-ruh! I liked Disneyland better!"
3. There has been no movement on anything tree-related with my next door neighbor. She cancelled our sit-down with the neighbor from around the corner and I haven't heard a word since. Greg and I wave and yell "hi!" every time we see her and we're going to keep doing that, pretending that nothing is wrong. And no one came to rip out her tree, so that's good. We may never know what was really going on.
4. I found this recipe for washing sheets that's supposed to make them very soft. It involves washing them in vinegar with very little detergent. I'm a big fan (it doesn't make your sheets smell like vinegar, I promise) but Greg has not been convinced. Then when Portlandia shot at our house they filmed a scene in our bedroom and Fred Armisen had to climb into our bed. As he got situated he murmured, "These sheets are really soft." If that's not the laundry equivalent of a double-blind randomized trial, I don't know what is. I think we can safely say that I WAS RIGHT.
5. My friends throw a county fair every year, held at the Kenton firehouse. There are competitions for ribbons in lots of categories from butter sculpture to pie making. I won a blue ribbon two years ago in pie making (blueberry sour cream) but this year I didn't even place (banana cream, shame on you). I'm not gonna lie, I'm competitive enough that this was a bummer. Luckily I hedged my bets and entered some of the lillies from the yard in the "gardening: flowers" category where I tied for first in a category with three entries.
I feel a tiny bit robbed because I used spent penstemon seed pods and how cool is that?
I shouldn't have to share my honor with some stupid zinnias (which really were beautiful). Greg guessed within one number how many items were in a sand jar, which garnered him some beads! We're both winners!
6. I installed a sliding screen door off the bedroom. It doesn't open or close smoothly, but hooray for fresh air in the bedroom. A cool night breeze is just the thing when you're drinking your wine and watching The Bachelorette together. Oh god, did I write that out loud?
7. The boy requested that I plant some orange tulips in the yard. I was going to plant "Sensual Touch" bulbs but I decided that it would be more embarrassing to order him "Orange Princess" bulbs. Do you like our princess bulbs? Greg picked out these pretty princess bulbs!
Because I'm not a totally horrible girlfriend, I also ordered him some Bastogne bulbs. Bastogne is featured prominently in Band of Brothers, which he loves. This has nothing to do with the fact that I think they're gorgeous and he never asked for red bulbs in the first place. I'm just being thoughtful.
8. My sister is coming up this month to visit and take photos of the garden. She is a fancy-pants photographer and she's going to document the yard better than I can. You know what would've been a great idea? Watering the lawn so it won't be all brown when she's here with her fancy-pants camera. Hopefully she can just photoshop that out.
