Reincarnation

This last winter our beloved Madrone tree suffered a catastrophic loss when we got slammed with a giant winter storm. The branch that broke was roughly a quarter of the tree's mass and unfortunately, our car happened to be directly under it when it came down.

The limb didn't break cleanly, instead it ripped down to the trunk and hung vertically. Bad for the tree, but it probably saved our car from massive damage. Poor little Pepe the Prius has a few more scratches but came away from the encounter generally intact. 

A few weeks later my dad came over with his chainsaw and went to work. Madrones are native to Washington State yet have had a rough time lately, so we were especially worried about disease susceptibility. 

The cut pieces sat out in our parking strip for a few weeks. One day I got a note on our door from a neighbor asking if she could have a few of the logs as she was trying her had at wood carving. Of course! Off they trundled to a new home. 

And today this sweet spoon showed up on our doorstep. An excellent use of our fallen branch. 

 The tree is flourishing, by the way. As I sit in my office typing, it's currently hosting 50 robins that are gorging themselves on berries before continuing their journey south.  

Peaches!

The only tree in our yard that even remotely enjoyed this summer was the frost peach. 

Smokin’ hot weather? Heck yeah. Bring it, said the peach tree. 

Randomly, and somewhat off-topic. Chris saw a bumper sticker on a prius yesterday that said: “Cool Prius! -Said Nobody Ever” .  Love it. 

Anyway, back to the peaches. We planted our tree back in 2011 in honor of our first child's momentous birth. So this is Ben’s tree and is therefore four years old. Which isn’t very long in the life of a peach tree. It’s our baby peach. 

Last year was the first summer we got fruit and frankly, it wasn’t anything to write home about. Not much flavor. We ate a few and then turned the rest into jam. 

Actually, I harvested them and then we promptly flew up to Alaska for a week so they sat in our fridge and our house sitter probably thought we had a weird obsession with tiny peaches, given that our fridge was entirely empty except for a giant bowl of tiny peaches. 

But they made AMAZING jam. It was seriously fantastic. So great that I turned into a hoarder and didn’t give any of it away. It’s usually my go-to hostess gift but nope, we ate every last jar. 

We ran out a few months ago and have been subsisting on an ok-but-no-super-flavorful plum jam. I tried to go the natural pectin route, using apples from our (former) crab-apple tree but the result was meh. 

So, back to Little Peachy. This poor tree decided to put all its energy to to producing the tastiest, most massive number of peaches known to man. So many that little peachy was bent in half trying to support the weight of these suckers. Today our mission was one of compassion: free the tree from her burden! (Yes, I should have staked up the branches and picked some of the littler fruits earlier on...what can I say, my time for horticultural tasks right now is at an all-time low)

Holy moly they were delicious. And Ben loved picking the fruit from ‘his’ tree.  (Hmm. just realized that we’ve yet to plant a tree for little Em. We’d best get on that)

We ate them for dinner atop a green salad. Which was NOT picked from the garden because my lettuce, due to the heat, bolted in two days flat.  Boo.

It was a grand harvest. And our little tree is standing a little straighter now. Hopefully she’ll now put her efforts into growing better, stronger branches.

I am seriously going to dream about these glorious peaches tonight.

Oh hey. Bolted lettuce. Pretty, in a non-edible kind of way. 

The roof on our garden shed is looking a wee bit dry, just like everything else around here. But also rather pretty, no?

So the plan is to unapologetically gorge ourselves silly on fresh fruit and then jam the rest. Because I still adore peach jam more than any other jam out there, with maybe the exception of highbush cranberry. Which you will probably only know about if you’ve lived in Alaska. Liquid gold, I tell you.

The problem with peaches, of course, is that there is an extra step in the jam-making process. You can’t just cut the fruit it, throw it in the pot with sugar and pectin, and call the whole thing good. No. You have the remove both the pits and, annoyingly, the skin.

So I set up a processing line in our kitchen: Whole fruit at one end, followed by a boiling hot water bath, then an ice water dunk, then the peeling process (which may be easy or horrible, depending on the individual peach), a bowl for the skins, then a holding bowl. Then I tear the peach apart with my hands, deposit the pit in the skin bowl, and toss the halves in the giant glass jar. It’s time consuming.

And, of course, done in the heat of the summer, standing over a hot stove, working with boiling liquid and slimy peaches. If I’ll be perfectly honest, I no longer love canning, mostly due to the fact that I’ve always done it in miserably hot kitchens with no ventilation. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, YOU LOUSY RECIRCULATING FAN.

But I’m telling you, peeps, the end product makes it worthwhile, especially in the dead of winter when you need a reminder of summer. 

Stay tuned for more canning goodness to come. 

xo, 

Sonja

Weekend happenings

My Dears,

I hope you have a happy holiday.

Chris had to work for most of it but got off with enough time for us to go over to a friend’s house for a BBQ. There was a gaggle of similarly-aged kids and Ben had an absolute hoot running around with his new pack of friends. It’s fun to watch the interactions of a three-year old. Plus we got to consume lots of tasty food and spend time with friends.

I made this ice cream cake, except with chocolate, vanilla, and a raspberry sorbet. We topped it with magic chocolate sauce and toasted peanuts. Judging by how much was left, I’m going to call it a success. It was outrageously simple and I think it’s going to become my go-to cake for summer birthdays. There are so many ice cream combos that are begging to be tried.  This one also looks tasty.

As a sign of how badly the vegetable garden required weeding, we discovered this dark-eyed junco nest in amongst the lettuces.

Each day there is a new egg and Ben and I are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the babies. For my part, I just hope they make it. 

Bailey and I have stepped up our efforts to ‘encourage’ the hordes of neighborhood cats to pursue their interests elsewhere but these little guys are on their own come night-time. Keep your fingers crossed, my dears. Our native avian populations need all the help they can get. 

Last night we had a great BBQ with my parents. Emma is a happy baby when she’s on somebody’s lap.

We also did a bit of house work this weekend, including a door in the basement bathroom:

With trim, even. But no handle (yet). So far we’ve been really pleased with the final wall color of the basement. It’s "light pewter" by Benjamin Moore and it’s nice and bright, without being plain ole white. 

We are also the proud new owners of a couch in the tv room. Beats sitting on the floor, that’s for sure. Chris installed window trim but this room still needs baseboard and a door. That’s our project for next week. We are soooo close. 

I am also finished with the tile in the laundry room but I’m out of time so that post must wait for another day. 

And last but not least, we did a small hike in Paradise Valley Conservation Area on Sunday. This was our second time there and both Chris and I agreed that we’re going to shelve this hike. It’s mostly brushy single-track that is shared by hikers, mountain bikers, and horses. On a beautiful sunday, it was simply too nerve-wracking due to the mountain bikers coming round corners and down hills at top speeds. But head on over there if you’re a biker; they even have a bike-specific ‘playground’. 

That’s all for now. 

xo, 

Sonja

Spring Happenings

I love this time of year. Seattle is green, green, green. All the little critters are out and about. Ben has been finding new pets all over the place. The kid is in bug heaven.

"Mama, what are the lady bugs doing?!"

“Hey, you can't walk on him. You’ll squish him! I’ll just move you over, little guy.."

Not yet ripe..

Tiny peaches! This tree was planted when Ben was born and this is the first year that we’ve had fruit. Hopefully the critters will hold off long enough for us to harvest a few.

Ben is living exclusively off snap peas right now.

Mmm, kale salads.

The raspberries took a bit of a beating when I transplanted them this Spring but it looks like they’re regrouping and we’ll still get a harvest.

Poor little lady bug....lost his ‘buddy’, thanks to an enthusiastic toddler.

Happy Gardening!

xo,

Sonja

Garden Shenanigans

We’ve been trying to make the most of this Spring-like weather and do a bit of work in the garden. At times, the ivy, blackberry, and laurel battles can seem a bit overwhelming but we’re making progress in a few select areas.

Ben’s pumpkins have sprouted. He lovingly drowns them every morning. They’re going to be hardy souls - if they survive their first few weeks of overwatering. 

The raspberry patch was an overgrown mess and I spent a few good hours last month tearing out all the bushes and tilling the soil. This would have been a project better suited to the Fall, when the plants were semi-dormant, but I was a pregnant mess then, with limited digging abilities. Hopefully I haven’t totally killed our summer harvest. Robbie helped me straighten it up and then I dug some holes for a new trellis. In the rain. Welcome to Spring in Seattle!

The first trellis was only five years old but the original 4x4s had completely rotten through. After a bit of research I decided to use the dreaded treated lumber, provided that we bury the ends in concrete.

The thinking is that the chemicals in the lumber won’t be able to leach into the soil, thanks to the concrete, although there still is the issue of run-off. A number of publications argue that treated lumber is acceptable for trellis for a variety of reasons, but mostly because arsenic (the really nasty component) isn’t particularly mobile, typically only moving an inch or two beyond the wood source. I hope they’re right.



 Chris and his dad poured a bit of concrete into the holes and voila! A trellis.

You can see the old trellis laying against the fence. Those posts used to be four feet tall, but were completely rotten from the ground surface down. 

Our raised beds are made of non-treated wood and, although only two years old, are showing signs of significant rot. A real bummer, since treated lumber is definitely a no-no for vegetable beds. 

This trellis has a improved design: it’s offset so that we can have a path along the fence, allowing the harvest to occur from both sides.

Let’s hope for a nice warm summer - the raspberries are my most favorite thing to harvest in the garden!

xo, 

Sonja

Garden Work

Much like last year, this season's gardening efforts are a bit rushed and slapdash. No time for fancy varietals or speciality seedlings. We need quick and hardy. 

Frankly, the fact that the tomatoes survived their planting by an enthusiastic toddler is a success. 

Ben was a huge (!) help when it came to clearing out the old weeds and digging the holes; his plant handling could use a little help, however. 

Ben was also in charge of seed selection. He was willing to compromise on most items but was absolutely adamant in regards to the pumpkins and watermelons. We're starting those indoors so perhaps that'll help a bit. He's already talking about his watermelon harvest and I simply didn't have the heart to tell him that those dreams are unlikely to come to fruition in our PNW growing season. Perhaps we'll all be pleasantly surprised. 

xo, 

Sonja

Small Gardening Efforts

I’ve written before about feeling a little overwhelmed when it comes to our yard. We’ve removed 2,500 pounds of ivy and countless loads of other plants like holly and blackberry...but I’ll be damned if those aren’t the three most tenacious species known to man. They simply refuse to stay dead.

So instead we’ve adopted a piecemeal approach to the yard, tackling small areas and devoting our resources to keeping those small areas ivy/holly/blackberry free.

Our first test patch was the area beneath the front deck that runs along the stairway.

When we bought the house in 2009 it was completely inhabited by a massive laurel bush/tree.

It required little watering but was pruning intensive and blocked the view from the dining room.

Judging by the historic photos of the house, it had been there a very long time:

But the view of the lake from the dining room was definitely worth fighting for so last summer Chris went to work with his chain saw. 

Here is what it looks like today (with crap phone photos - sorry):

Thanks to several consultations with my mom, we came up with a plan. The main plant is a dwarf Japanese maple - we didn’t want anything that would grow beyond 10 feet and block the view that we’d gone to so much effort to obtain.

The hostas (two types) were donated by our neighbor John and the grasses came from my parents. I love that fabulous big-leaf spiky thing. (Mom - what’s it called again?). It looks prehistoric.

That’s an evergreen camellia in back of the variegated hostas and that lovely bright green thing on the right is something... man I’ve got to write these names down. Eventually it should sprout upwards and outwards, hiding a bit more of the ugly cement foundation. The succulents and ground covers in front were slow to start but are having a fantastic bloom this summer. They’re fighting it out with the dandelions and it’s a vicious battle.

One of my favorites is the evergreen dwarf jasmine. Oh, it smells heavenly. And the fish are hand-painted by my god-siblings - I tell people that they’re the pacific northwest equivalent of garden gnomes.

Looking forward to another year of growth, particularly in the ground cover department. 

Baby steps. 

xo, 

Sonja

Next up: Our massive trenching project that tore up half our yard.

In the Blog-O-Sphere

Astonishingly, miraculously, we had a bumper tomato crop this year. The best I’ve ever had. I’m chalking it up to our lovely Fall weather as I can take no credit: I abused them horribly, withholding water and whacking away at offending limbs. Sometimes plant torture is quite effective.  

Yet another fascinating article on the subject of women as parents, partners, and professionals in the workplace.

Ok, Peeps, someone I know is one their way to purchase one of these nifty little sneak-a-leak (thank you to K for coming up with that term!) gadgets for women. I had a college roommate that practiced peeing standing up but she reported that it takes a lot of precision bladder control. And good aim. Evidently the Army hands out the Sani-Fems to their female soldiers as stopping to pop a squat in the middle of patrol might be hazardous. So the real question is: Would YOU use one?  I can think of many situations (third world bathrooms, anyone?) in which they might come in handy. But I'll admit: the logics seem a bit daunting.

Not everybody likes dolphins. 

My cousin’s grandma is going to meet an American airman (that lived with her family) that she hasn’t seen since WWII. Read the backstory (from my cousin’s perspective) here. [Eh: this actually happened last week. I’m late to the game. The whole family participated.] And while you’re at it, peruse the rest of his art on his tumblr here.  Go George. 

xxoo, 

Sonja

Weekend Activities

I hope you had a great weekend, Lovelies. Ours was fairly relaxed - mostly we're trying to soak up as much of this seattle sun as possible. 

Here are a few photos from the past week. 

We've been doing a lot of park time. Ben discovered the merry-go-round. Everything else ceased to be interesting. 

We went over to visit my grandma and grandpa and took advantage of the sunny weather to conduct the visit out-of-doors. Yay for avoiding the old-people-smell!  Ben decided that he was going swim in the fountain. 

Even if it meant scaling a small hedge to get there. 

Success.

These boys take their hearing protection very seriously. 

On Saturday morning we headed down to the UW Waterfront Activities Center and rented a canoe ($11/hour. Cheaper if you're a student). I used to do this with my family when I was just a wee little tyke. 

Ben had a blast. Not surprising, given that his new favorite word is 'water'. Except that he can't say 'w's and it sounds like 'hotter'. 

Tip: parking is plentiful and free after noon on Saturdays and all day on Sundays. So much fun to paddle around the lily pads and under the bridges on Foster Island.

Next time we'll bring a picnic and do a bit of swimming.

On Saturday night Chris hung out with the bambino and I headed down to the stadium with my sister-in-law Megan to watch a Sounders soccer game. I should have snagged some ear protection as it was so very, very loud. But also so much fun. 

We had a true soccer fan in our midst and he was able to keep us informed on player details and the proper lyrics to the various chants/songs. Who knew there was so much soccer-related intrigue?! And: I am incapable of clapping along, in time, with a stadium full of 20,000 people. Hopeless, I tell you.

On Sunday morning we slept in until 7 am (!) and then headed out to Lord Hills Regional Park for a nice morning jaunt. We saw three other people. Maybe. It's never busy. The baby did a little walking and then was content to ride in the backpack and munch on beef jerky for the rest of the hike.

On Sunday evening our (awesome, amazing, sweet) SIL Megan came over to the house and watched Ben for the night so Chris and I could chow down on Indian food in the University District. I'm still full. 

Then we grabbed a pint of ice cream and sat on the beach at Magnusun Park. What a fabulous end to the day. 

We don't have any grand plans for this week. Mostly we're trying to stay cool. 

Ben accomplishes this by falling into various bodies of water:

And eating popsicles. 

Me too. I've had three today. 

In other news, I just put on my bee suit and sprayed the hell out of this yellow jacket nest on our roof. We want to paint and they have not been receptive to our prepping activities. 

I had to work up my courage to get up there and destroy the nest, even in full protective gear. My cheek still stings from where they got me last week when I accidentally discovered their lair.  I dug out the area with a shovel (hordes of angry wasps exploded up into the air) and then sprayed them down with a plant-based spray from my Uncle Bill. 

update: I just went up again and gave them another dose. I'll keep you updated on their 'progress'.  

Stay cool, peeps. 

xxoo, 

Sonja