Peitricia, Peitricia, How Does Your Garden Grow?

AWESOMELY! With a little help from my friends, of course.

Back it up a bit. The last time I had a for-real-dirt-in-the-ground-hit-the-greenhouse-for-more-than-one-little-flat-of-annuals-for-a-window-box was eleven years ago. I was just pregnant with The Boy, and without my knowing it at the time, it was my last summer at our duplex in Mitchell.

Being newly pregnant plus mommying a barely one-year-old was not the most conducive to gardening. So it was mostly wildflowers that year. And weeds (hey, it's God's carpet).

But I have lusted after a garden ever since then. Part of this is that I do love gardening. I love the feel of the smooth, dark earth; the shimmer of the unfurling leaves after a rain; the ever-reddening of the tomatoes on the vines. I love the connection I feel to my grandmothers, both of whom were avid gardeners. I love seeing the literal fruits of my labours, and at the same time love knowing that the biggest labour wasn't mine at all - it's like magic how it just comes up.

The other part of it is that I have long said I'm a perennial kind of girl, not an annual one. A garden is all about stability. You don't plant a garden when you've only signed a one-year lease (voice of experience talking there). It's too much effort to get it right to use it for only one year, plus if you move every August 1, you know that it'll be all planting and tending and no eating.

So the chance to put in my garden this last weekend was *way* more than just a love of fresh lettuce. It means that I can see myself staying here for awhile. How long, I don't know. But long enough that it's worth putting down some roots.

I love, love, love raised beds. They're so neat and tidy. And orderly. And easy to maintain. (Pretty much a technical writer's dream.) The Husband's parents are in the process of transforming their large garden into a dreamland of raised beds, so I jumped at their offer (well, her offer of his help) to put together some for me.

Here is a "before." Between the house and the driveway is a bit of an odd place to put a garden maybe. But we've got these *gorgeous* old oak trees - so gorgeous that they block sunlight from 90% of my backyard. So for tomatoes, I get inventive.

I got a big ol' pile of soil delivered and The Husband (bless his "I-hate-gardening-more-than-I-hate-projects" soul) hit up a friend with a truck to go pick up my lumber.

The driveway became a construction site.

Someone had a blast with every part of the garden creation. Someone else is 11.

Both of them had a fab time messing around in the dirt.

But the most fun was the planting. We made our lists and each of us planted the things we like best.

The Boy is doing a Three Sisters garden and decided he wanted some onions as well.

The Girl's got peas, dill, garlic, onions, and a spot left over to do a cantaloupe when we find one.

Here's the "after" to the "before." I've got tomatoes and peppers on the sunniest side of the house. 

And here's my not quite as sunny side, but still sunny enough that *something's* bound to come up.

I'm wildly excited about it all. Of course, I know that excitement does not equal success, so I'm still signed up for our CSA and plan to visit the local farmer's market as necessary. Because just because my boxes look awesome does not mean that my thumb is any less black.

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Home Again

Where are you headed?

Steinbach.

What is the purpose of your visit?

Visit family and friends.

How long will you be in Canada?

Coming back on Sunday.

How many times has this conversation taken place on a Friday night between the hours of midnight and 2 am at the Pembina border crossing? I don't even know anymore.

We've passed those well-thumbed passports into that little window what feels like about a kajillion times. No, no alcohol or tobacco. No, no firearms. Yes, some gifts. No, no large sums of money.

(Do we look like we carry large sums of money??)

When my coworkers ask about my weekend plans, they always shake their heads when I say "going to Canada." They're astonished that I would just head to another country while they're busy mowing lawns and getting groceries. They usually assume that I'm flying but then I say, nope, driving.

They all think I'm nuts, but we've done it so often that it doesn't seem like a huge deal anymore. Plus, it was all part of the deal when we moved.

There were two cities on the list of places where The Husband was allowed to look for work:  Winnipeg and Minneapolis. That's it. I was willing to move (kind of), but I was not willing to go beyond a day's drive from my peeps.

(Am I too old to say "peeps"? Too Menno? Too nerdy? Probably all of the above.)

Do I love driving for 7 hours? No. But do I love being able to surprise my mother-in-law for her birthday? Yup. Do I love hand-delivering my Mother's Day plant to my sweet momma? Yup.

Do I love knowing that if something bad happens, I can be there by the next morning? Definitely.

As much as we love living here, I don't think I'd love it quite so much if I felt far removed from my nearest (in spirit) and dearest. Driving 14 hours out of 48 hours so you can see your family for 10 of them? Perfectly sane. Moving to where seeing anyone that has known you since birth involves searching for seat sales? Now *that's * nuts.

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Dinner of Champions

The Husband is travelling this week. And you know what that means...

...ZERO incentive to cook.

It also means a project. That may or may not include oil-based primer - huzzah! But don't tell The Husband. He's pretending he doesn't know that I'm doing it.


Most of the time I really enjoy cooking. I like trying new recipes and I especially like the never-ending quest of finding meals that suit all of our palates.

(If you know of something that is vegan, tomato-free, lentil-free, sweet potato-free, chickpea-free, is not a soup, and can survive eight hours in a crockpot and still be fantastic...I am all ears. In the meantime, every person gets a vote and anything that scores 2.5 out of 4 gets put into the rotation.)

But without The Husband to back me up (which he always valiantly does, even if he later tells me privately that he would be okay if we didn't have that particular combination of lentils again - although he assures me that he is still willing to try to like them), I lose heart. I just can't face it.

Especially on a Monday.

Especially when Mondays kids eat for 99 cents at the best buffet ever.

(And yes, I know as soon as I say "buffet," the bar plummets and as long as the bacon bits aren't in the jello, we're talking high quality.)

But this one is a good one, honest. It's got tons of fresh veggies in the salad bar and lots of vegetarian options and fresh fruit in the dessert bar.

Of course, you can lead those horses to water...

..but you can't make them eat anything except chocolate muffins, french fries, and breadsticks drink.

Oh well. At least olives are kind of a vegetable, yes?

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Music Sounds Better With You

I love going to school performances.

Sure, the scheduling and juggling meetings so I can head over there in the middle of the day is a bit annoying. They also tend to clump up at the end of the year, so The Husband and I end up playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who has gets to see 24 presentations on national monuments. And I always roll my eyes at the sea of smartphones/SLR cameras/video cameras in the audience and the jockeying for the best sightlines.

But still. It's a window into what my kids do all day. It's a chance to observe them in one of their natural habitats. I get to put faces to names (of both their friends and that kid who got suspended AGAIN).

One of the best parts is when the kids come into the room, anxiously scanning the audience for a familiar face, and then their eyes light up and a shy smile steals across their face and they give a little half-wave.

I think I love the music ones the best. I'm a Mennonite Arts major - I dig the music thing.

(Ha - that looks like I majored in "Mennonite Arts." I so wish that was a real discipline.)

Plus The Boy is absolutely adorable when he performs. Music gets right into his body. He can't keep still. (Yes, that's a nine-year-old boy thing, but his wiggles follow the beat whenever he hears a song.)

He loves to sing, but he doesn't want to show how much he loves it. His chin tilts up and his eyes go to the ceiling and he half loses himself in his breathy voice. He sways and swivels and nods without realizing it.

He's still working on the whole rhythm and pitch aspect, but he's got the heart thing totally down. When he learns a song, it's in his blood. He can't pass a piano without playing his latest piece (we're on Can-Can now. A welcome change from Fur Elise).

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Rose-Smelling Part the First

 Spring Summer returned to Minnesota today. High twenties, sunny, a bit humid, a bit breezy - gorgeous.

What's a girl to do except strap on her running shoes and head out for a run?

(This was actually a big deal in and of itself. I hurt myself a few weeks back - own fault, pushed myself too hard, busted up my IT band, yadda yadda, couldn't run for awhile - so I'm relishing getting back in the game.)

Whenever I run outside, it's always in only one direction. Towards the lake:

I loved this lake even before we moved here. When we went on our whirlwind tour to find a house four days before The Husband was scheduled to start his new job, our relocation agent drove us around the area we had in mind and there, right in the middle of the city, was a lake.

(This is not a big deal to the locals, but to a prairie girl, whose closest "lakes" were man-made mosquito traps or all the way into the next province, this was astonishing.)

More astonishing was that the house we ended up with was only three quarters of a mile from this lake. It didn't take long before all of my walks headed in that direction.

Then we moved to get into the right school division, and I mourned that we were farther away from the lake. Only two miles, but it wasn't a quick fifteen-minute walk anymore.

(Maybe that's why I started running longer distances right from the start. It was the only way to get down to the beach and back.)

We longed to get back into our first neighbourhood, not least because all of our runs/bikes/beach/park trips ended up there.

And lo and behold, after years of stalking the MLS listings and narrowing our search down to six square blocks in the entire state, our perfect little house on the hill happens to be as close to the lake as possible while still being just inside the school district.

I love, love, love the lake. I love the separate walking and biking paths. I love that it's the perfect 3-mile distance around. I love watching the sailboats. I love the new concession stand that makes the best black bean burgers I've ever tasted. I love that they're replacing the play structure so the kids will have a most difficult choice determining whether they want to play there or at the beach.

I love that they have concerts in the bandshell on summer weekends:

I love that when I bike to work, I get to the lake just as the sun is cresting the water. I love that I can see my downtown office skyscraper from its beaches and know that during the day I'm just a hop, skip, and a jump from one of my favourite places.

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Anybody else...

...getting tired of checking this blog only to discover that yet again PM hasn't posted?

Me too.

(Apparently Blogger is thinking the same thing as they have totally overhauled the whole post creation factory since the last time I was here and I don't know where anything is. Please pardon errant italics.)

Know what else I'm tired of? This whole "life at the speed of light" thing. The "where has the time gone?" deal.

At first it was kind of funny. I felt like a walking cliche and I sniggered a bit at my whole mom-jeans-and-high-fiber outlook.

(Mmmm. Fiber.)


And there are definite advantages to the speediness. I don't get the Monday blues anymore; I've realized that I only need to blink a couple of times and then suddenly it's Friday night.

(Cuts both ways, though. I get a teensy bit sad every Friday because I know Monday is just around the corner.)

Then I started to get mad. What business does Time have jumping to warp speed without advance warning? Just when everything starts to get settled...the kids get to a good age, my job is great, we are feeling comfortable in our house/neighborhood/church....suddenly I can't even catch my breath long enough to stop and smell those dang roses?

And then I started to get sad. (Didn't I tell you that I was going to have a mid-life crisis this year?) Like the walking cliche I am, I am sad that I feel these important moments slipping so quickly through my fingertips. I am sad that I spend so much time anticipating what's coming next that I miss what's happening now.

I am sad that in so many ways I've "arrived" at a place where I've longed to be and, now that I'm here, I feel too rushed to even enjoy it.

So I am trying to be more mindful. I am trying to notice the small things. To take pleasure in the mundane. To give thanks for the ordinary.

I'm going to try to be deliberate and record those things here. Because otherwise my gratitude is as fleeting as the moment for which I am thankful. No promises that it will be every day or anything, but I want this place to be a little bit less "long time no see" and more "in our last episode."

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