The Menagerie

Pollen...why did it have to be pollen?

I garden.  I have the world's teeniest garden, but I love to be out there, trimming the espaliered apple trees, moving the potted annuals around, contemplating new additions. (New plan: some golden Heuchera around one of the paths as contrast.)  Saturday I gardened (mostly puttering), and it was lovely (though I did get rained upon).  Pollen situation?  Not so bad.

Yesterday, I didn't garden.  However, the pollen count must have been astronomical, because even upstairs with our two air filtration systems (not to mention the amazing air filters we have for our A/C), I could NOT stop sneezing.  We went out for breakfast.  Could NOT stop sneezing.  Took a benedryl, which I'm no longer used to, and was completely gorked.  Three hour nap later...still sneezing.  Did you know you can sneeze so much you can hurt your back?   Rinsed my sinuses with saline, which helped, but still, wasn't quite back to normal.  Benedryl before bed, and here I am this morning, a little Benedryl-hung over, but not sneezing nearly so much as yesterday.

Before pregancy, there were Claritin, Sudafed, and Nasonex.  Now, I'm stuck with benedryl and hiding inside.  Even on lovely days, our windows have to stay shut and the A/C running. 

I'm praying for rain today -- it'll knock the pollen out of the air. (There's a 40% chance, according to my weather widget, and the rest of the week looks nice and wet.)  I'll also be hiding downtown, in a big office building, for part of the day, which means I will not be up against my other side of the urban-growth-boundary neighbors (read: just about across the street) who garden on a much larger scale (read: farming) and who make my springs miserable. 

Long, long time gone

I really can't recall how many years it's been since I went more than 24 hours without checking email.  Ten?   But Sunday I didn't bother to open my laptop. 

Anyway, I did a lot of sleeping and household things this weekend -- breaking down cardboard, cleaning the downstairs carpet, that sort of thing.  Saturday I spent with a scrapbook pro at her gorgeous home on the mountain above my house, admiring the view, drinking (non-alcoholic) margaritas, chitty-chatting (as my sister might say) and putting stickers in my not-nearly-so-snazzy scrapbook (begun long ago) to dress it up.  Lots of fun.  Sunday I gardened and beat my all-time best Civilization Conquests score. I love taking over the world. 

Today I work. 

Some things about my week

1. I'm hungry every hour.
2. My belly is getting quite large.
3. I'm going to OHSU today, but no time to ride the tram.  (We haven't had time yet.)
4. I was chastised by a judge yesterday because of something my client hasn't done yet.
5. It flowed downhill, back to him. 
6. I have two cases where the other parties are drug addicts and are both women. The addicts have the same initials and are represented by the same attorney. 
7. I just know I'm going to screw up the names at some point. 
8. My birthday is Sunday. 
9. Tomorrow Matthew and I will get to spend time with part of the village that raised me, a couple my parents' age who would take me for a week at a time to hang out with when I was both a precocious kid and then later an obnoxious teenager. 
10. I think it probably helped that one of them is a counselor and the other is a psychiatrist who works with vets.
11. In a recent conversation, one of them asked me, "So....do you still dye your hair?" (She meant pink and purple.) 
12. The funny bit was that I had just come from the salon, where I'd had some color work done. 
13. I'm still craving salmon sushi and beer, neither of which I can have for months.   
14. Matthew bought me a huge maternity body pillow -- it's U shaped -- for the pregnancy.  It arrived Wednesday, and it has made a small (queen) bed much smaller -- the dog has to really fight for space with us now. 
15. My garden is coming back: the daphne is blooming, the day lily is coming up, the cherry tree is budding, the roses are putting out new growth, the clematises are shooting up again -- spring is nearly here!
16. I'm really pissed off about the daylight savings time thing this weekend.  I still can't quite figure out the logic of daylight savings time, and would like to ditch it for good. 
17. The law school caught me in an unguarded moment before the panel on Tuesday.  Download parking.mp3
18. Gemini was very active yesterday, including when I was in chambers with the aforementioned judge. 
19. It makes me wonder if I'm somehow poisoning her by exposing her to the law at such a tender age...or if I should have just let her handle the situation. 
20. I have been irrationally, obnoxiously smug since I found out Gemini is a girl.  I think it must be  a chemical bonding sort of thing, but for some reason, I'm very proud of her being a girl -- even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it. 

At last

The downside of living in new construction (especially after living in an old orchard) is not having birds in the garden. I love the birds (if not the mess), and now I have a half-dozen goldfinch at any one time in the back. Yesterday I scored, though -- a huge hummingbird buzzing the butterfly bush. I won't put out feeders for hummingbirds, because I know I wouldn't be good about cleaning them daily. Instead, I planted a number of plants they're supposed to like, in the hopes it would pay off. And it has!

Garden Blogging

I haven't blogged the garden in ages -- I don't think since I've even had this blog. For newbies, I have the world's tiniest garden, the legacy of Portland's Urban Growth Boundary, rising land prices, and skinflint developers. We love our house, but don't always love our neighbors. The philosophy with the garden is to a) try to make things seem bigger and b) try to forget the people around us.

The NW corner: I'm kind of glad I didn't get rid of the butterfly bush. We're on year 3, and it's finally looking the way I want it to.

The N side: Take a look at these before (4/05) and after (7/06) pictures. I hadn't realized it had changed so much in just a year and some change. (The old pictures will be small, because they were sized for the old blog which had restrictions. The old pictures are also cheating, because I have many of the same shots taken 6/30/05, but that wouldn't be nearly as dramatic.)

The NE corner: This is our three-in-one cherry tree with very prolific David phlox planted beneath it. By the way, the trellises in front of the plants were designed to keep Norris from stomping on the plants when he went after the dogs on the other side of the fence. It only helps a little. Again you get the before and after.

The E side: I knew I wanted to espalier when I saw how tiny our hard would be. Looking at last year's pictures, I can't believe the apple trees made it, especially since they'd already been in the ground a year!

Looking S: Lots has been added, and mostly last summer. I fill in with annuals and fuscia when the mood hits, but other than that, I don't add much to the general scheme. The $6 Japanese Maple (it was a dying twig when I got it on clearance from Home Depot) is now about 10', though it barely shows in these photos.

The view from the garage back door:

And I love this display case! I found it at a garden store -- it was used to house objects for sale -- and did this grand sort of "I want the display!" thing. It worked and I didn't pay very much for it, either. I keep meaning to paint it, but I kind of like the scrub-green look.

This is the angel NP found for us, to remember Starbuck with. I put it beneath my favorite rose, Mr. Lincoln. The anenome in the foreground was one of the many bulbs I planted in Nika's honor.

This lacecap hydrangea was dying a sad and miserable death by slug before I put it in a pot last year. It's still not very large, but at least it has leaves now!

And Norris likes the yard. I think he misses the grass even less than I do -- I'll never go back. Trust me, picking up dog waste is a lot easier with pea gravel and bark dust than with grass (think the difference between kitty litter and carpeting). The only problem with pea gravel is that it migrates into the plant beds, but even that's liveable from a mulching perspective.

Someday I'll separate this clematis from the honeysuckle, but I like the way the foliage contrasts and the way the clematis blooms almost immediately after the honeysuckle is done.