Tree Spotting

I love sitting out in our garden, surrounded by our pot plants and the few plants I’ve managed to grow, contemplating what they need from me next.  Today I had to perform surgery on a pot which housed my dinosaur plant (a cycad), two succulents, and a mysterious sprout we noticed last night.  I bought the cycad recently because it’s native to NZ and I hope to grow it into a magnificent house tree.  Upon digging down, I discovered that the sprout had a huge root!

A similar thing happened to my Meyer lemon tree when I let a little wee sprout live in it's pot for a month as a tiny little being.  Spring warmed up and the thing grew into a capsicum tree.  This tree overshadowed any possibility of performance from my poor lemon tree which nearly died.  It lost all but three of its’ already miniscule leaves.  I couldn’t really do anything to help them until we moved properly to Indiana after our visit home so that lemon tree has lost nearly a year of growth!  I've separated them out and it’s looking good now though, with 12 quite big leaves and a few more on the way.  I’m glad it’s healthy looking before the long months of near dormancy during winter.

Three Avocado Trees

My mother has an avocado tree and we eat avocado with everything when we’re at her place.  Such opulence!  So I am trying to sprout some avocado trees.  I have three fine looking pits suspended above jars of water.  They have been sitting there for a little over a week and each have a tiny little tail root but no other evidence of growth so far.  I know that we will be here for at least 3 years, maybe 4, so chances are we will have our first harvest before we leave.  Of course, I’m going to have to buy some big ol’ pots to grow them in – they’ll have to live indoors in the snowy winter – but I am an optimist about this operation!  Maybe we’ll move to Florida one day and they can be transplanted into the ground.  Green card permitted.

The Perfect Day

I have had a perfect day.  I did nothing.  I didn't even get out of my p.j.s until our buddy, Morris (of the red peppers) insisted it was my job to run down to the store for booze at 4pm.  Well, it kinda is.  Yet in the nothingness, I baked cookies (we were all out, it was a necessity), crocheted a Chrissie pressie (I'm super excited but my lips are sealed), watched a movie, and had brunch with Jbird aka lover-boy.  Now I'm in a huge hurry to get the focaccia bread in the oven but I had to blog.  So here I am, writing an obligatory blog (it's my first one, give me a break).  Unfortunately, I discovered some buddies from Texas and Canada have been writing a blog and all I want to do is read it.  Bah to that.  Gotta go. xxx

Anyone wanna confirm or deny my use of the Oxford comma?  I lost a grade on my paper because of it (well, actually, because I didn't use it)!  Bah to that too.

Roasted Red Peppers

Our friend, Morris, gave us at least 20 red capsicum.  They are huge, juicy guys.  We could’ve taken more but I told him my kitchen had no more room.  What a treat!  I’ve always wanted to make roasted red peppers but we never have enough to spare. Today was the day!  It’s super easy, (and set our fire alarm off at least three times).  The sound of the skin popping as it chars is followed quickly by a sweet singed smell. 

Unfortunately, I made yummy pasta sauce yesterday, caremalised onions last week and lemon curd the week before (yum yum yum for my tum tum tum), so I only had a few jars left.  After extensive deliberation on this dilemma, I decided to condense a lot of them down further and make some roasted red pepper pesto.  I don’t think an open jar of roasted red peppers is meant to be kept in the fridge too long (and there are only two of us to gobble it all down) but pesto seems to last longer.  

I used the pesto part of this recipe http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Roasted-Pepper-Pesto_tomato-Pizza-Recipezaar.   

Even after making all of this, and giving Sophie a few, we have more to spare!  What would you do with them?

Assessing Life

I have been reading about assessment for my paper.  What a brain drain.  Today was formative assessment, or assessment which directly informs learning (50 pages? It’s taken 3 hours to read just 25).  It has got me thinking about what I do in my own life and whether it improves, stays the same or gets worse.   I think of practicing something as exercising muscles in my brain and their subsequent flexibility.  I do a lot of things but I feel as though unless I have some way of formatively assessing them, they’ll only improve at a very limited pace.  

Crocheting and knitting would improve at a greater rate, had I a buddy with at least slightly better skills than me to work with.  I am often motivated to do the work by seeing what I can make.  It makes me happy because I have achieved something.  The physical feeling of the task is also quite soothing.  I am also motivated by crochet deadlines, the most likely ones being Christmas and birthdays. Despite this, I don't feel as though I am improving much because I don't challenge myself to harder stitches or patterns.

I wonder if you have some things in your life that you’re working on improving, and what they are.  I believe that a goal will be more easily achieved if you have thought about what that goal is.

Guernsey Literary

I just read a gorgeous book – the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  Thanks for the recommendation, Libby.  It was beautifully thought provoking, historically interesting - set in post WWII London and Guernsey Island - and, well, romantic.  Not in a girl-meets-boy way (although a girl meets a boy), but in a "I want my life to be on that little island, with those lovely people" kind of way.  Finishing this book has left me feeling a bit sad, I can never read it for the first time again.

Its’ narrative was through many written letters and reminded me of the conversations that occur through letters in real life.  I have consequently been drafting letters to people and reading replies from them in my head.  It made me think of the times that letters have been especially important to me – my dad spent a year in Zimbabwe, and each time I have moved from Auckland - to Dhaka, Baltimore and Bloomington.  Pre-email, I was a letter writer with penpals in America, Germany and Australia (as well as a few friends around NZ).   

Nothing can substitute that physicality of receiving, holding, opening and reading a letter.  I promised myself (and a few potential recipients) that I would go back to writing physical letters upon moving to Bloomington but so far have not lived up to that promise.  There’s always today.

I'm a Sun Cat

I love the sun, love capturing it, and enjoying it indoors as well as out.  Our first place in Baltimore was sunless.  It was basically a cave and needed the lights on all day during the peak of winter.  Luckily we had a nice stoop which got sun all day and there was a park near by.  Our second place had lovely lovely morning sun.  It was east facing with a lovely bay window which even gave us a glimpse of the South which is the sunniest face a window can have in the Northern hemisphere.  I know it doesn’t take a genius to work this out but I know it because my parents' house is North facing in NZ and we love the sunlight their lounge gets, though her furniture doesn’t!
 

Our current apartment has both East and West facing walls so we get sun for a large portion of both the morning and the afternoon.  In the mornings I stretch out on our bed with my study and a coffee – sun is not conducive to staying awake!  Then in the afternoons I aim to have everything done by 4:30, when the sun really starts to come in those windows.  Today we rearranged the lounge so that our table - which is where we study - isn’t directly in the sunlight and I can lie on our couch with a good book and enjoy its splendours.

Probably the sunniest spots will be stolen by the pot plants soon enough but they are currently enjoying being outdoors while the weather remains mild.

Social Anxiety

Moving out-of-state and internationally has this phenomenal ability to make you feel all alone in the world, even though I moved with the person closest to me in the world (I definitely take Jbird for granted) and now live down the road from my sister-in-law.  I also have daily reminders from people who love me in other places. Just today, I received a package from DC and a lovely phone call from two friends in Baltimore. Every day, somebody emails me from NZ.  I really don't have anything to complain about.  

I had an experience on Saturday where I had two social events to go to.  At the first one, I only knew the hosts.  I became all shy and couldn’t think of how to talk to anyone - I wanted to run out of there as quickly as possible.  This took away all interest of going to the second event.  Miraculously at the event, I was seated at a table where I had met two of the people before (I swear they were the only two people I knew in a room of 70).  I also met a lady who works for a world wide missions organisation and we had a lot in common.  I was even invited to join a book club!  I know who engineered this.  There was a great sermon at church the next day, telling me I cannot expect to be blessed by worship (I don't take this just to be time spent at church but also time spent in every-day relationship-building) but am there to be a blessing.  It was absolutely perfect timing for my selfish-introverted ways.  Love ya’ll.  Miss you! 

An afternoon on a bike

We went for a bike ride this afternoon.  The weather was perfect for it - sunny and breezy.  Not just around the block, but out of town to a piano factory – it was 9 miles away.  If you're wondering, it should have been 55 minutes each way (thanks google maps) but we got a bit lost, leaving at 2pm and getting home at 6pm.  The scenery was edible, it was so nice.  The corn fields were all dry and withery and made a rustling sound as we biked past them.  There were some significant hills which were fun to go down and the trees were very pretty.  Most of them are still very green but there is a colourful hue to them too, so you can tell they're just about to change. Bloomington is far greener and tidier than Baltimore was.  Nobody shouts at you out their car windows either.  Instead, they speed past.   It was frightening at times, especially because it some pretty major roads exist without shoulders to ride on.  So Jbird and I hugged the kerb, sometimes riding on grass or sidewalks.  Thankfully no nasty metal or glass found our tyres.    Next time we go for a significant bike ride, I hope it'll be for a more leisurely reason and we'll scout out the bike roads.  They’re much quieter, often have special bike lanes and are therefore a little less scary.

I'm in the garden

I had a tiny bit of success with some roses last year and I've let it go to my head!  Jbird gave me a pot of six miniature rose plants for Valentines day, they looked gorgeous but they were dieing within the week.  They'd been grown in a Canadian hot house, under perfect temperature and moisture conditions to move to our drafty (moisture deficient) flat with faint winter sunshine and the shock was too much for them.  So I separated them all out and spent a few moments every day pruning away anything dead and watering them (probably over-watering) and they flourished, providing me flowers for the next 5 month.  I gave them away (and I miss them!) but they've given me the courage to keep trying. I don't know much but we bought a couple books at yard sales about gardening in this area and I'm excited that we have at least three years in the same place with a little, tiny bit of land.  Let's see what we can do!