October 23, 2015 - Meatballs, Raspberries

A quick one, I hope: got to get up early for tomorrow's Our Social Fabric sale - the last one at 871 East Hastings. After we give away the last bundle we will dismantle the shop, pack it all into a storage pod, and figure out what to do next.

The music: Joni Mitchell BBC Concert, 1970; Neil Young, same thing, 1971, three times. Can't get enough Neil. Rolling Stones: Live at the BBC (1963-1965); Rolling Stones It's Only Rock 'n' Roll.

Kitchen Island - Friday, October 23, 2015 

Counter-clockwise from lower left: the same water bottle as yesterday, Humatrope, glasses, Encyclopedia of Creative Cooking, phone 1 of 3, yard sale measuring cups. The set was missing exactly the one cup I already had. Lucky, right?

The Encyclopedia of Creative Cooking, 1982, edited by Charlotte Turgeon

Passed a major milestone yesterday: 10,000 hits on my site. I've been watching it come for months. Celebrated with Hawaiian meatballs from the cookbook I snagged from my mom when I left home in 1983, but used pre-made, Costco meatballs. Delicious.

Dinner: two ate Hawaiian Meatballs, one had his meatballs with tomato sauce, one had his tomato sauce with faux ground beef. Cucumbers. 3 milk, 1 sparkling water with lemon

Love Notes

To Do Lists for Three

Trivot from yard sale free box -  what is she doing to that fish?

Contingency plans

Dreams, Reality

Peppers from my daughter's plant, ageing ginger, sketchy fennel, one canning lid left-over from making zucchini relish, a piece of cording, and one small potato - dug by hand on a summer's late afternoon. No gloves, but the soil was perfect and cool and the potatoes worth the dirty fingernails. 

The bowl was painted by me in Mexico, the reward at the end of a pointless time-share presentation. It took a surprising amount of time - most of the vacation... the painting, that is. I was 7 months pregnant. We were there to rest. When I wasn't painting I lay on my side on the swinging palapa platform, reading - white cotton curtains surrounding me, sparkling turquoise ocean just beyond - sucking back banana smoothies and dreaming about the little girl inside me. We would understand each other. 

Though most of my dreams for her will never come true, the same is true for any parent's dreams! The difference is timing, that's all. My dreams came to an end when she was only two months old, when we were presented with her diagnosis, grabbed by the collar, and rudely jerked out of our misty dream-world. How lucky for me! Unburdened by my own hopes, I am free to celebrate her smallest achievement: jumping with two feet together, for example, or figuring out the first step of tying shoelaces. Her achievements are many and fill me with pride. What's more, she is fascinating. She is a delight. Who knows what she's capable of?

The last raspberries of summer - worth removing one's gum for

Waste Audit, 14 Days

Contents of sewing room garbage can - 14 days

Homework for Master Recycling class: a personal waste audit. Held on to all household waste for 2 weeks to see what I could see. This is the bag that came from the sewing room trash can. Clockwise, from top (before sorting): 

• Marathon of Hope sticker. September - when a young girl's thoughts turn to Terry Fox. My daughter ran for Terry.
• Two lunch bag love notes can be made from one grocery store receipt. 
• Yellow name tag from a hand-me-down backpack from the kids two doors away.
• Candy wrapper - one of two unexplained bits of trash found during my audit. Curiosity plus independence, or the beginnings of hyperphaegia? Too early to tell, but the next stage of Prader-Willi syndrome is long overdue.
• Thread snips and embroidered, used, alcohol swabs (you read that right) - the Humatrope Collar is finally finished! These are the rejects from making the labels.
• Broken twin needle - altered some clothes for a friend. 
• Granola wrappers - haven't been eating properly.
• Fish food package - my daughter finally owns a pet. Violet the beta is very well-fed.
• Light bulb from sewing room - I spend a lot of time here, late into the night. Not quite sure how to dispose of it...

Lunch bag love notes

October 3 Sale Specials

1 Sale Down, 3 to Go

Our last sale was one of the best we've had to date - pre-loved and factory left-over fabrics and notions flooded out of our little store! When all the customers had left we took a look around and noticed barely a dent was made on what we still have!

HELP! We have got to clear out as much stock as possible before we leave our location at the end of October!

Special for the next sale:

Patterns - FREE!

Zippers - FREE!

Vacuum Bags of 3m lengths of fabric - FREE!

Notions - $2 or less!

Rolls of fabric in the green bins: $2 each, any size

Fabric on bolts - $5 ea

See you there! 

Saturday, October 3

10-1

Vacuum Bags of 3m lengths - now FREE

Most notions $2/bag

Boxes and boxes of free stuff outside

Green bins of rolled fabric - $2 any roll

Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty

A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever - so true! So is a family. That "beauty" has surpassed "job" is a wonderful relief; I wasn't always sure it could happen.

Holding pen - this is where all the question marks end up: the yard waste bin, the ladder, old bricks, plants that don't fit elsewhere, excess seeds: forget-me-not, poppy and foxglove. It is turning into a garden on its own.

I stashed the window out of reach until I could decide what to do with it - 8 years ago. Think I'll hang it by an existing nail on the side of the garage...

The wrought iron plant hanger, intended for my mother two Christmases ago, was found in an alley.

The very old rhododendron tree - dubbed "the Shooting Tree" by my 4 year-old(?) son - is a hot pink stunner in late May. It's a survivor.

The apple tree got a daring, lop-sided pruning this year. I see the stump now serves as a chalk holder.

Reclaimed items, awaiting re-purposing. Useful, abandoned stuff is everywhere.

Torches: I'm wondering if it's time to find these a new home - we have had no use for them.

In the paradigm-changing words of a friend whose path might never have crossed my own had we not both given birth at roughly the same point and place in time, "Stuff comes, and stuff goes." I'll happily move them along to someone who might actually use them. But I'm an optimist: big changes have been afoot... I'm hanging on to them until the end of summer.

Garden 14:  Harvest
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea 
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things
Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower
Garden 4: Maryjane
Garden 3: Family Portrait
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans

Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things

Straight out of the Jetson's, right?

It was euphorbia that first turned my frown upside-down on those cortisol-fuelled, forced strolls* through the neighbourhood.
*See the 3rd distraction

I wanted some for the longest time. And I wanted it from the neighbourhood. However, euphorbia has a milky sap that itches if touched bare-skinned, so I was unlikely to attain any on the fly. My chance came when my neighbour offered me a shorter variety that was escaping her front garden. I put on my gloves.

Can't remember the exact circumstances of the tall ones, my faves. I would love a lush, jutting, space-age clump of them in every corner - chartreuse rocket ship landing-stations masquerading as early spring flowers - but they don't come easy. I planted this one directly under the kitchen window, where I can put my head out each morning and check on its progress. It's settling in nicely.

Euphorbia, tall and small

The rusting, peeling, metal building decoration is one of two I found on the sidewalk in front of a house in East Vancouver, en route to whatever was the destination of the day. It would have been nap time.

I kept, in the car, a Costco-sized container of cashews, a pillow, two blankets, a box of Kleenex, and a succession of water-tight, fake-Tupperware containers, just in case. I spent a lot of time there, napping, and if not napping, driving less-travelled roads to some child-friendly destination.

I took care to not disturb the child while loading.

The wrought iron curlicue (in the wooden planter box) snapped off the next-door neighbour's front railing when the digger was tearing down her condemned house.

You'd think it would be hard to remain dignified while being escorted from one's home wearing a too-large, hooded, Tyvec onesie, duct-taped at the wrists and ankles, like a walking bio hazard - but my neighbour managed it.

I saw the bulldozer crunch up her railing from my son's bedroom window. We liberated the metal curlicue from the rubble, in the dark. Another 2 or 3 straight pieces serve as plant stakes elsewhere in the garden.

To be continued...

Garden 14:  Harvest
Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea 
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower
Garden 4: Maryjane
Garden 3: Family Portrait
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans

Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower

As promised: a poke through my garden - in 10 installments, more or less.

The story of much of what's in my house and garden begins, "I was walking down the street..."

This bench came from outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken on W. Broadway, which is now David Hunter Garden Centre. I paid $20 for it, including delivery - everything that was in my wallet when I happened upon the men loading it into their van, happened to get talking to them, and happened to be offered it for however much I was willing to spend. I'm lucky that way.

Before babies, I would have spent hours improving it. For about the first 8 years I still intended to. Now I love the peeling paint the most. Thank you, Babies.

Behind it, my fairy godflower. This obliging wallflower - an orphan rescued from a bulldozer - is happy to grow from just a broken twig stuck in the soil.

Garden 14:  Harvest
Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea 
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things
Garden 4: Maryjane
Garden 3: Family Portrait
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans