Garden mysteries

Gardening is my default activity in the summer. After work or on the weekends, it's the first thing I start doing, and I'll always do it before home repair or sewing or practicing Spanish (but I do make time for laundry and Star Trek. I'm not a heathen.) As a result, my gardens are looking great. June's combo of rain and warm weather means that everything is growing like mad, but most plants aren't fruiting yet, so there's not actually much to eat yet.

Every year, you get a few "volunteer" plants, which are the name for plants that were unexpected results of last year's crops self-seeding. Since these seeds are often blown around, and I rotate crops, things come up in unexpected places. This year I not only have volunteers, I have mysteries. I've encountered several plants that don't seem to be weeds - you can usually recognize weeds because when you have one, you have a hundred. These mysteries are compounded by the fact that my mother did some of my planting, and it's possible that she put in things but didn't tell me.

I've got my eye on three mystery plants.

I have three of these plants. They are about two feet high, with huge, round leaves on a single stem. They are in a bed that housed watermelon, zinnias, and garlic last year, but they are definitely not one of those.

 I have a single specimen of this plant, which is about 18" high, with thin, wispy leaves, and several stems towering above a base of smaller stems.

This plant is the most puzzling. It is in the exact location where I planted an echinacea root this spring. Echinacea are small round plants, less than two feet high, with purpely-red blossoms. Instead, I have an enormous, meter-high plant with white-purple furled flowers. I highly suspect that the garden company sold me the wrong root. It's like planting a pumpkin seed and getting a tomato.

My informal garden advising committee is my last hope. If they can't identify the plants before they go to seed, then I may have to kill them, because because that's when a weed is not just an unwanted plant but a menace.

So long, San Francisco (at least temporarily)

In May, I visited my brother and his family, but I had so much fun I never got around to posting, so this is a retrospective piece. My annual visits to the Bay area are something I look forward to, but my brother and his family will be traveling for the next year, so this was a chance to see them and say a temporary good-bye to SF. I love hanging out in the city and soaking up the wearing-a-hoodie, using-a-scooter, coder vibe, which is so different than the suit-wearing, policy wonk culture in DC.

We made stuffed-crust pizza. It was my first try, and my advice to myself for next time: you can't use too much cheese.

My niece is as tall as me. She is clearly not done growing, so very soon I will be the shortest family member, at least until the next generation has kids.

K presented a poster about for her class interview-a-scientist project. She prepared excellent questions and then recorded and transcribed the interview. From my research, I know how mind-numbing it can be to transcribe conversations.

I took a day trip to Angel Island, which involved the subway, a tram, and a ferry ride.

Angel Island was once used to process immigrants, aka the Ellis Island of the West. Because of anti-Chinese legislation, potential Chinese immigrants could spend weeks or ever months in the barracks, waiting to found out if they would be permitted to enter the US. Some of them carved poetry about loneliness and home on the walls.

It was a pretty sobering reminder of how things used to be, and tragically, how thing still are for many people trying to immigrate to the US.

They have a tough exercise routine at my brother's house.  A medium-sized boy clings to you, and you try to do everything you can to remove him. I managed one session, plus one session of my brother's "Oh, you are bored? Let's do as many sit-ups and push-ups as we can!" routine.

Loaner cat

When both of my pets died this spring, I was sad not only because they were gone, but also because I'm not planning to have any pets for a while. I want to be able to travel more easily in about five years, and any pets I adopt would still be around then. I miss having animals in my life, but lobbying my friends to get pets didn't work.

However, I'm pleased to introduce my loaner cat, Wesley! I turns out that you can just go to the library and check cats out, although you can't renew because there's always a wait list. I jest, of course. Wesley normally lives with my brother and sister-in-law, and since they are planning to take their two lovely children and travel for a year, Wesley needed a temporary home. He only arrived on Monday, so he's still in the "Where the hell did I end up?" phase, warily watching me, but he'll occasionally let me pet him, and he has already staked out his favorite chair for naps.

Garden love

I've been delinquent in posting, without any real excuse. To help fill the gap, here's a photo of something that's currently bringing me a lot of happiness - my garden.

The picture doesn't do it justice. So many things are blooming: lavender, pansies, dianthus (carnations), roses, day lilies, foxglove, and moss roses. The lavender is a big mass of purple and green, lazily swarming with happy bees. Most mornings before work I go out and pull a handful of weeds, sometimes just to have an excuse to look at all the lovely plants and admire them.

Camping

The annual physicist* camping trip has come and gone and was declared a rousing success. It only rained once, and so for the first time in 6 years of camping, I didn't immediately come home and hang my tent out to dry. The kids are getting older, which means they can play more with each other, and greater numbers of parents can sleep through the night and be (somewhat) well-rested when the kids and birds wake up at 6am. Because of our "one family contributes one communal meal" system, we all ate delicious food. And we got to spend time together, doing math and singing and eating s'mores, which is the most important thing of all.


*We have one adult non-physicist and his biological and technical distinctiveness has been added to our own.**
**Borg reference.

Cleaning

Tonight I was mopping my kitchen floor, something I do about once every three months, and I got to thinking about how different my cleaning philosophy is compared to how I was raised. When I was growing up, one of my chores was to wash the kitchen floor, something that took at least an hour. My mother taught me that the proper way to wash a floor was on your hands and knees with a scrubbing brush. I even remember a time, before she worked outside the home and the kids were too young to help much with chores, when she used an index card system for tracking monthly, weekly, and annual chores. I recall that this reminded one to wash the windows and to apply lemon oil to the furniture.

I don't mean to imply that my mother is an obsessive cleaner. We were never chastised for making a mess (although we probably had to clean it up) and our house looked like everyone else's. But I'm quite aware of how cleaning standards change - on the 1940's radio programs I listen to, they are forever advertising waxes and polishes for floors, furniture, and cars. I think the combination of modern finishes and the lack of a full-time homemaker spelled the end of polishes.

Nowadays I never spend more than 90 minutes per week cleaning, if you don't include dishes or laundry. I attribute this to my patented three-part system: have no children, own as few belongings as possible, and lower your standards. No one ever spills juice on my floors, and I never have to pick up before vacuuming. That gives me an hour vacuum the whole house and clean two bathrooms, and then I do whatever else I notice. My house probably isn't perfect, but it's good enough and then I have lots of time for all the other fun things in life, like gardening and sitting by the firebowl with friends.

A new garden

At some point during my dismal spring I decided to put in a new garden. I've often considered planting a cottage garden, which is usually a big mass of colorful, overlapping flowering perennials. I have never done it because it takes years for such a garden to establish. But this year, I thought, if it takes two years to grow and then looks good during the third year when I move, at least I'll have enjoyed one year. And since my future plans are indeterminate, it's entirely possible that I'll be living in this house and enjoying the garden for years to come.

I engaged an advisory board, made up of three friend/relatives who care about gardening. And by "engaged", I mean that I pelted them with emails, drawings of the space, and links to plants. Here's what we've come up with so far.

In early March, when the garden was just a dream.

I spent two long weekends digging, with the help of my roommate.

My father, who always prefers to use machines, helped me rent a tiller to dig some more.

My mother spent an entire day considering exactly where the plants should go and labeling empty spaces with markers. I then purchased six carloads of mulch and compost, and shoveled for a long time. 

This is what it looks like right now! It's a big space, sparsely filled with 6" tall plants. But give it a lot of water and two years to grow, and I think it will be beautiful. I'll be sure to post updates throughout the summer.