i'm not dead!

(although i did have a crazy experience on the freeway recently... and i suppose i'm lucky i'm not dead)...

anyway, i realize it must seem like i've abandoned my blog... but here's the deal - it's been nice and sunny outside, and i have a brand new house with all of this amazing yard space just waiting for me to dig up the grass, pick out the rocks, and plant something cool... so that's what i've been up to.

...well, that... and a whole lot more! here's what i've done since my last blog post!:

i've done spring break in Korea & Japan! I stayed with my friend Hee Sun in Seoul, S. Korea. We were there for several days (all of which I was recovering from the stupid cold Mike shared with me. I lost my voice the last 2 of those days... which SUCKED!)... but we saw a bunch of cool old fashioned Korean village areas, we went by the blue house (which is like their version of the white house - yes, their president lives there, and yes, it's blue). we saw temples, we had TONS of kimchi!

In Japan, we stayed with my friend Yuka. I learned enough Japanese to say hello, yes, thank you, and i almost mastered "good night" (which i've now forgotten)... pathetic, i know... but i'll get there. i fell in LOVE with Japan! We only spent 2 nights in Japan, but we made the most of it! We flew into Osaka, and then Yuka lives a bit outside of Kyoto (which is a short train ride away from Kyoto, in southern Japan). We spent a whole day exploring the Gion section of Kyoto - which is a very well preserved older area of Japan. You can see all sorts of coolness in that area. THE place for viewing the cherry blossoms is there, in an enormous & beautiful park, there are temples, a pagoda (which you can actually go inside and climb up 2 stories!), there's a really cool WW2 memorial (which is like a zillion times cooler than our stupid wall) - complete with a GINORMOUS budha statue, and a miniature monk statue for each Japanese soldier who passed away in the war. it's also the area where Maiko hang out - Maiko are Geisha in training, and they're a Kyoto-only thing. We were very lucky to get to see 3 of them! we had our picture taken with a very young one - she was SO tiny and cute! we took a photo of the other two, as well. All of them had photographers following them around, taking their picture around the Gion area.... and don't even get me started about Japanese food - it's all SO good!!! I didn't want to leave Japan... I kept wishing we had more time there. Of all of the countries I've ever been (and i've been to a decent number of countries), Japan was by far my favorite. i made Mike promise that we could go back again! (if you go, though - heads up - we had a lot of trouble getting our ATM cards to work there. I've NEVER had that problem anywhere else... and it was totally unexpected! It may just be Kyoto, but it was not very common for places to take a credit card, either. i would expect that shouldn't be a problem in Tokyo, but ya never know).

THEN i spent an all-expense paid weekend retreat at Ocean Shores through my union. it was a blast! it was a seminar trip for relatively new teachers, and we learned all sorts of cool stuff. i was already in love with my union before that - this just rejuvinated my love affair with my union. they're awesome! i told my rep to feel free to drag me down to Olympia or whatever else she would like for me to do, i'm happy to help. i owe them big time for everything they've done for me this year... plus i'm huge on advocating for myeslf (and teaching my students to do so).

Speaking of which, i had to hold an intervention in my first period class. i've had to deal with all sorts of things in there that i shouldn't HAVE to deal with.. but alas, drama aside, i took matters into my own hands, and made the students lay down the law for me. i made them come up with a list of rights and responsibilities, which i'm going to print out and make all of them sign... then when they violate them, i'm taking one of the millions of photocopies i'll have on hand and highlighting the thing they violated - and stapling it to the discipline form. i think they've realized i'm done putting up with any crap in there... because it's been a LOT calmer since i held the intervention.... which is NICE. i have 5 weeks left, and i just want to ride them out in peace without drama and nonsense.

then, lets see... my puppy was born 3 days ago, and i'm all excited about that! i'm anxiously waiting until it's ok to go up for a visit, and waiting anxiously to hear which i'm allowed to pick from. i'm on the waiting list (and have paid my deposit), but i don't yet know where on the waiting list my name is. (cross your fingers that one of the 2 fawn boys can come home with me).

we held our open house yesterday, and we had a great turn out! people just leisurely stopped by all afternoon/evening, which was perfect! A couple of our neighbors even stopped by! i saw my friend & Seattle-mom, Marj (we painted together at the UW) - i haven't seen her in ages, and we talked about how we need to get the UW painting gang together for another lunch... and my friend Heather from work stopped by! It was good for Mike to finally meet her. I talk about our two language teachers all of the time, and Mike gets them mixed up. He can't remember which one teaches what, and always thinks i'm talking about the other one. it's kind of funny. (i'm also hoping Heather's husband (a firefighter) will give Mike a lesson in fire safety).

we borrowed my sister's truck for a while, to help drive all of our TONS (literally) of yard waste to the dump. we took 2 truck loads today, and i got a bunch of stuff planted in my butterfly garden!... which, of course, is one of my favorite things to do these days. i love playing in the dirt... digging weeds out... putting pretty stuff in the ground... watching the miracle that happens every time a seed comes up. every time i bury one i'm SURE it'll never come up. how can that speck of dust turn into a robust, beautiful plant? then like magic, they all do! i get giddy every time a seedling pops up or a plant blooms. i realize it's all just a normal part of spring, but believing i'm doing something to actually help it along and shape it into a beautiful front yard just seems unreal! i love it!

...and now... i'm sharing popcorn with my oldest cat, who turned 5 on the 1st. that's right - my 5 year old weenie cat who won't eat anything but dry cat food LOVES popcorn. he begs for it, even! he'll come over, paw at me, and cock his head to the side, and give me this low meow until i give him a piece. then he plays with it for a few seconds before devouring it. fascinating, isn't it?

mail order butterfly magnet

i came home late this afternoon to find a small package waiting for me at my doorstep. i knew immediately that it was one of the plants i had ordered. this butterfly garden has been kind of an exotic journey (or at least it feels that way sometimes).... some plants have been difficult to find - but then maybe that's because i started looking in the middle of winter, right? who knows?... but in all of my infinite impatience, i decided to order some seeds online... and when i couldn't find seeds, i ordered living plants. one of the living plants was in the box i found this evening at my doorstep... and it's the first one i've received. it was fascinating in a rather ordinary sort of way. i had no idea how they would go about shipping a live plant to my house from Pennsylvania.... all of that wonder and amazement... and guessing... ended in a pretty mundane way. i opened the box, and found a little, ordinary plant container with a little, ordinary looking plant growing in it... all tipped on its side, with some crumpled packing paper wrapped around the plant part to protect it during the shipping process... that's it. nothing terribly different or unusual about it. there was a paper folded in half with instructions for what to do when i received the plant.... basically it told me to water the thing. (duh, right?)

nonetheless, i'm still totally stoked about it. i'm trying to figure out if it's ok to hike right on out this weekend and start acclimating it, or if the plant would prefer to coast along indoors with the rest of my seedlings until after the frost quits hitting us. it's a perennial, so it just might be ok.

i also got 3 new packets of seeds in the mail today (mail order is totally fun... because then i get something cool in the mail - and even though i know it's coming, it's still a fun surprise... especially compared to all of the bills that keep arriving in the mailbox. i way prefer it when the mailbox is a fun place to visit).

here's a little info about what i got in the mail today... the live plant i got is a red fortune hyssop... which i hadn't even heard of before i started planning my butterfly garden... i have a blue one on order too, from another nursery (couldn't find a single place that had BOTH in stock. go figure). the seeds i got are for Queen Anne's Lace, Butterfly Weed, and Pentas... none of which i've grown before, but all of which attract butterflies like magnets.

i'm waiting for 6 more plants to arrive in the mail... one of which is called 'orange butterfly plant' ...i currently have butterfly weed & butterfly flower... and all of them are orange. i'm not exactly clear about the differences between them. i ordered 2 online and found seeds for one in the store... there wasn't enough info available when i did the ordering to tell if they're all the same things, and are being called something different by different seed vendors... or if they're actually different from one another. i suppose i'll find out sometime this summer when they really get growing, right?

i'm also waiting for the blue hyssop, a blazing star liatris, swamp milkweed, joe pye weed, and a new variety of bee balm. again, none of which i've ever grown before. i'm so hoping that i can keep them all alive. i worry about things like killing seedlings. they just seem so fragile in the few weeks after they first come up. i'm sure it's rediculous, but i always worry that i'm going to do something wrong and kill them all. i've already managed to kill all of my sunflower seedlings. i think i kept them too moist, but who knows for sure? i have no idea! and then if i don't do something to kill them, mike probably will. he's notorious about leaving the door open to the room they're in - and when that happens, Akira sneaks in and eats them like he's a starving kitty at a seafood all you can eat bar. he killed all of my corn... which i KNOW i can grow, because i've done it before. i grew corn on my balcony last year! :) i've since replanted it, and i've got 6 new corn seedlings going strong.

playing in the dirt

it has been snowing now on and off for 2 and a half days or so. it's just enough to be annoying, but not enough to get me out of going to work. it's prevented me from going outside and getting much done in my beloved butterfly garden... which has made me restless.

the good news is that i have had some time indoors to sit around and plant zillions of seeds (and by zillions i mean more like 160 or so). of the seeds that i currently have in my possession for the butterfly garden, i have planted enough to fulfill my butterfly garden plan. the rest are currently in the process of being shipped to me via various online vendors. they were difficult to find locally for whatever reasons... so i ordered them. i got bronze fennel this afternoon, only to discover after inspecting it that i most likely already had some in my spice rack. i don't know if it's a little known fact, or if i'm just a naive and inexperienced gardener so far... but bronze fennel appears to grow from anise seeds. whatever. at least i've got nice fresh seeds speficially chosen to grow nice, healthy plants. who knows what i'd get if i just started planting my spices... though in college i did try just that, and i think some of it did come up - but i don't think that experiment got too far. i moved out and trekked to Europe not too long afterward. but i digress...

i've also had time indoors to play with my dirt. i've been performing highly scientific experiments on it. i've discovered that it has a pH of 6.0 (or perhaps slightly higher, but not high enough to be 7.0)... it has Low to Very Low levels of the 3 big nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorous, & potash. i'm currently conducting an experiment that will tell me the approximate levels of sand, clay & silt. that one's not quite as exciting to watch - it will take several days to settle, and will settle into levels... the other experiments turned fun colors when i added the necessary chemicals. fireworks or not, it'll give me some useful information.

in attempting to dig out a big fat rhododendron on Saturday, i also discovered that i have hardpan soil - which is easy to dig through until you get several inches down - then it's hard as a rock. the recommendation for it was that i take a pick ax to it, and chop the crap out of it... the good news is that even with a little hand shovel, i was able to chip away at it with just a little effort. a pick ax should make quick work of it (or so i hope, right?)... i've also discovered that i have a really healthy earth worm civilization moving around out there. that can't possibly be a bad thing. i just hope i don't kill 'em while i'm chopping away at the hardpan problem.

as far as i can tell, the number one best thing i can do to to my crappy soil after whacking at it with my brand new pick ax (that i just bought this afternoon, and i'm super stoked about), is workin a bunch of compost... which i also bought this afternoon. i'm not quite as excited about the compost as about the pick ax... mostly because it's not MY compost. not to worry, though, i am working on building my own compost bin, and should have an abundance of my own compost next year. even so - it's annoying to go out and buy something i could have for free if i had thought ahead and tossed my vegetable waste and dead leaves into a bucket, right?

so between all of this math to figure out just what will fit in my butterfly garden without crowding stuff out... and all of the science to figure out what kind of soil i've got - so i can start improving it... i'm finally finding (after 30 years of life) actual uses for all of that math and science they pushed on me in school. i'm finding that it's far more exciting and fun when it's done in direct correlation to a real life problem. so naturally, i'm plotting ways to bring all of this math and science into my art classroom in an interactive and fun way. why not? i find that the kids get excited about the things i show excitement about. it's contagious. i'm planning lessons at both of my middle schools that will include some of the stuff i've been playing with.

berries & butterflies

today i planted 2 blueberry bushes, and a cherry tree that Mike's parents got for us as a Christmas gift. (don't worry, the tree hasn't been sitting around un-planted since December. it was just delivered to us on Thursday). we're also planning to plant raspberries and blackberries in large containers (to prevent spreading & taking over the yard)... and probably some strawberries. i'm totally excited about all of the berries. our blueberry bushes don't look anything like this one yet, but give it a couple of years, and it'll get there. i've been reading up on it - and it turns out it needs acidic soil (which i doubt we have, so we'll be looking for the right fertilizer), and you're supposed to pick off flowers the first year to prevent berries from forming - it encourages the bush to fill out better, and in the long run will allow it to produce more berries. so no blueberries this year, but hopefully enough to share next year! the cherry tree is a semi-dwarf rainier cherry tree. it only gets to be about 10 feet tall, so we'll be able to pick them pretty easily. sounds like a happy situation to me. i love rainier cherries, and they're always SO expensive - it'll be nice to get some for free! :)

we also have a neat herb container garden planned for the back deck, and a butterfly garden planned for the front yard - where all of the ugly rhododendrons are currently blocking the only front window we have on the ground floor. i'm so anxious to get those out of there, and transform that area into a major butterfly magnet! we even have a butterfly bush in the back yard that i want to hack back to a reasonable size and move to the front yard. i've read that they're actually classified as a noxious weed in WA state, so i'm lead to believe that it'll take a good hacking and survive any transplant trauma that might occur.

TGIF!!!!!!

after a long and annoying week, it was NICE to go share a drink with Mike! i wish every night was friday night.

Best Picture

i love that Sean Penn won Best Actor for his role in Milk. i think the movie should have gotten Best Picture, too. I didn't even see the other movies that were nominated for that award, but i can tell you that Milk was one of the best movies i've seen in ages. i suspect i would still think so, even if i had seen the other nominees. very few movies make me cry, but the end of this one did. it was moving. if you haven't seen it yet, go find a place still showing it or get it on dvd the second it comes out... it's worth it.

in the mean time - here's a trailer to tide you over:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3658547225/

Masaaki

want a theme for the photos i've posted this weekend so far? they all contain elusive, rarely seen individuals. this one is my oldest cat, Masaaki. he's known mainly for his timid nature (that's the nice way of saying he's a total weenie, and scared of everything)... he also howls really REALLY loud every morning at about 4am. those things aside, Masaaki is a total sweetie, and has loads of cute personality quirks that make him incredibly loveable.... if you can find and befriend him. he turns 5 later this year.