Good to be home

Houston was great and Canada was AWESOME, but there's really no place like home.  I've been in a daze of happiness for the last week+, remembering why I love this little house so much.  Walking to the farmer's market on Sunday mornings, the beautiful light coming through our big old-fashioned windows, cooking in my own kitchen (there's some kind of magic about that, because this kitchen is definitely smaller than the Houston apartment one - but I almost never cooked in Houston and definitely never enjoyed it like I do here).  And having our own little backyard, which is what this post is mostly about.

But first, obligatory Canada beauty shot:

This photo is even more awesome because it was taken within a stone's throw (if thrown by someone with a better arm than mine) of the Burgess Shale quarry.  Trilobites!

Anyway, after a week in that part of the world, you'd think it would be a let-down to get back to the semi-suburbia that is Menlo Park, but that was definitely not the case.  First of all, I didn't get to go straight back home - Sam and I flew back to Houston in an all-day airport marathon, involving three layovers and a lot of overpriced food, to pick up my car and all my stuff from the summer.  We drove home via Tucson and spent two glorious days eating at places that would have cost twice as much in California, and caught up with the surprisingly many people we know who've been drawn down there in the last few years.  That was followed by some pretty but never-ending driving, a little sight-seeing and arm-waving in Sam's field area, and FINALLY arriving home just in time to get some take-out from our favorite Chinese place down the street.

(Also, I have to include this, we watched Hunger Games that night, and I really don't get why people were so happy about it.  I really think that's one of the worst movies I've seen in a while, both from a fan's perspective and a regular movie-goer's perspective.  Moving on...)

So it turns out that Good Mood + Free Time = Ambitious Projects, and that's where the backyard comes in.  We had the great luck of moving into a place that had been reasonably well tended by a woman who (apparently) really loves plants, so from day one in this house we had a green and blooming backyard.  Amazingly, we've managed not to kill everything in our first year, despite a few long absences during the dry season, and now that we're signed on for year two, it's been exciting to think about how we can improve the yard ourselves and really make it into a place we love.  I think of this as the equivalent to the new paint job when we first moved in, but this time it involves living things and long-term commitment to keeping those things alive.

Last year for Sam's birthday, I got him some seeds and a gift card to a really neat nursery near our house.  He built a pretty kickass raised garden from some scrap wood in the garage, and we tried to grow things like cilantro, onions, and lettuce.  The only thing that really took off was the parsley, so much so that it's now attempting to reproduce.  I'm fairly certain some of the blame for our failure lies on critters eating the new shoots, because the little bit of cilantro that did appear had its tasty bits chewed off within a day or two.  At any rate, the garden is pretty bare now, but we revisited the nursery and we're ready for a fresh start.

That mass of green on the left is the overgrown parsley.

While we were at the nursery, we also decided to just go ahead and try all the little improvements Sam has been talking about - native plants to fill in some of the bare patches in the yard, and installing a drip system so everything won't die next time we travel.

Sam's really good at doing useful things, and I'm really good a spending money.  So in addition to all that, we tried this pallet garden project that we had each heard about independently, inspired by our finding a pretty good-looking, small pallet next to a dumpster last week (it was fate!).  The tutorial we tried to follow is here, but we didn't really follow it all that closely.  Our step-by-step:

1) Steal (?) a pallet that looks like it's about to be thrown out.
2) Sand down the rough edges so it doesn't impale you with splinters.
3) Cover all the stains and imperfections with leftover house paint.
4) Buy the cheapest flowers at the nursery and herbs that might or might not ever be useful.
5) Staple-gun landscaping fabric to the back of the pallet.
6) Throw in some crappy compost and a bag of potting soil.
7) Plant all the flowers and herbs.
8) Realize there's nowhere near enough. Buy more at Trader Joe's and piss off a lady by clearing the shelf of all the cute little orange ones.
9) Plant the new ones, realize it's still not enough. Transplant some of the overgrown parsley.
10) Prop the finished pallet against the wall and hope for the best!

So far, it's looking surprisingly healthy, with the exception of the transplanted parsley and the Trader Joe's chives.  It's definitely suffering from gravity a bit, and I'm not sure we'll ever be able to hang it on the wall (the original plan) because the back is bulging with the weight of all that potting soil and vegetable matter.  But I'm pleased because it looks cute and homemade, and considering that everything didn't just up and die the first night, I'm feeling a little more optimistic than maybe I should be.

The plan was to hang it here (nails already conveniently in place). No, we're not competing with the neighbors' pepper and tomato plants, where did you get that idea?

See how pretty??  It was really the perfect plan.

All planted up and ready to go! You're supposed to let it lie there for a few weeks so the soil can settle and the roots can get going, but it seemed like that would just kill off everything at the top. Also we didn't have nearly enough plants, or soil, so the top was kind of falling apart and we wanted to get gravity involved.

The herbs are all in the green row, and the purplish blue ones at the bottom are supposed to attract butterflies. The sad, sad parsley is at the top with the Trader Joe's additions.

So it's currently propped against the wall, and it might just have to stay there.  Still pretty cute though, you have to admit.

I should mention that all this went down while we were taking care of a friend's cat, which was displaced when a bank robber set fire to his getaway car in her carport while she was out of the country (best reason to babysit a cat EVER).  The kitty was quite happy to perch on the couch watching hummingbirds, and us.

Awww.

So dignified.  As though her head wasn't smashed between the window pane and screen just seconds before.

We're quite sad to have given her back, since it was nice to have a furry thing around the house for a while, but I'm sure she's much happier at home with her scratching post, and Sam's allergies are certainly better off this way.