60 Years and Counting

My mom turns 60 today, and the fam celebrated with a party last Saturday. Rach and I brought peonies and roses from our gardens to decorate Mom's porch swing (the throne of honor for the evening), and Kim brought balloons. Which come to think of it Barak didn't try to grab at all night - and he loves those things! The gorgeous spring weather held enough to keep him and his cousins entertained for the evening.

After a lovely meal of steak, fresh garden salads, mac and cheese, and cake, we trooped back outdoors to chat on the porch and watch the kids play. Yup - that's all Mom wanted for her big day! Its hard to remember how we spent these little family occasions before there were kids - Ella, Roone, and Barak happily ran around the yard while the rest of us relaxed on the porch, just enjoying one another's company.

It wouldn't be a family gathering without family photos, so here's one of the Chambers clan (for some reason Dad's not in it, hmm. I need to figure out how he escaped and do that next time!). Its been nice to have Jonathan in town for the past year - he's lived all over the country and is headed out on another adventure within the next month.

Mom enjoyed her day and is busily making plans for her adventures this next year (Razorback football season is how many days away?). Congrats, Mom - may the next year be filled with even more love and laughter than this one!

Adventures in Mulching

Garden projects are well under way, thanks to some lovely weather the past few weeks. I've been hard at work preparing beds and fighting weeds, and I knew that mulching was the next step. A few years back my sis and brother in law mentioned they'd bought mulch in bulk - sounded like a great plan to me. While the bags can be helpful, the plastic bag waste really annoyed me and I found it got a little expensive.

I did some web browsing and located Missouri Organic - a company just a few miles down the road from me near the Stadiums. Their site is super helpful, including a calculator to help estimate the amount you'll need for various bed shapes. It also contained a list of available mulches and explained the differences. When I saw an Erosion Control version, I knew this was the company for me. My yard slopes quite a bit from the backyard to the front road (one of these days I'd love to measure the angle!) and soil loss/standing water is a real issue when it rains. I happily calculated, then overestimated to ensure I could do some 'extra' projects as I had the time.

The dump truck arrived bright and early Monday with my 4.5 cubic yards of mulch. With delivery fees and tax it came to less than $100 - which is quite a deal if you do the math calc comparisons to bagged by the cubic foot mulch. Its even cheaper without the delivery fee, but seeing as how I don't own a dump truck this was perfect! Eight hours and a bit of help from my brother later I had all the beds on left side of my back yard finished - don't they look lovely? 

Next up is the vegetable garden - tonight I'll finish the edging so its ready to hold mulch tomorrow. This weekend I hope to lay edging around the right beds and/or the hammock bed (I have yet to determine which I'll do!). After that comes the front yard - and I'm guessing I have more than enough mulch to finish the work. The pile looks barely touched!

Alex Cross

Earlier this winter I was looking for new books to entertain me. I love reading long, involved novels - but there's also a time for the quick, easy read. The trouble is finding a quick, easy read that also engages my mind and pulls me into the story. Well, Kiss the Girls, happened to be on one weekend and inspired me to pick up my first James Patterson novel. I was not disappointed.

My introduction to mystery/suspense fiction is fairly recent - just last summer, really. My mother has read them for years (the little skull on the spine of library books always freaked me out a bit), but I never really got why it was interesting to read about murders. After reading Charlaine Harris' many series, however, I began to understand. Its not so much about the murder as it is solving the puzzles behind the event.

The Alex Cross series weaves complex plots and intriguing characters. I find them quite easy to read - just a few hours per book, but then again I am a fast reader. Nana Mama is hysterical, and one of the few people that can give Alex 'what for'. I'm currently on Double Cross, and in an effort to avoid spoiling anyone that might care, I won't go into many details. Suffice it to say that like the books before it, twists and turns abound. The chapters are quite short, which makes it easy to read a few over breakfast and lunch, or while riding my bike in the evenings.

Don't know what I'll do when I get caught up - waiting for the next novel in a just discovered series is not fun for me. I'm much happier to wait when its a series I discovered at its inception. Patterson seems to crank out books rather quickly (I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see his process), and currently writes several series. Once again, my friendly library provides all the books on my list - thank goodness. I'd go broke otherwise!

Refreshing the Kitchen

So I took a couple days vacation in hopes of doing some yard work - naturally its rained all weekend and just let up about 3 hours ago. Sigh. Good thing I've already planned to take a day next week as well so I can get some projects finished up before the summer heat arrives.

This happened to me last year as well, so this time I had a back-up plan in place. I've considered making some changed to my kitchen for quite a while. Its a small space and I love to cook, but my counter space is horrendously limited (which makes bread baking pretty exciting). One corner was totally underutilized - it held a rollout dishwasher when I bought my home, which i immediately removed (quite impractical for one person).

I knew for sure I wanted to remove the doors from the upper cabinets - kept banging my head on them and they only added to the tightness of the space. I started painting the cabinets white, intending to paint them yellow in a final stage, but I ended up really liking the bright white. The light coming in the windows bounces off and makes the room feel quite fresh. Some yellow shelf liner added a pop of color and I love the open look.

I received a kitchen island from my Grandmother last year, but discovered after I got it home that it was just slightly too short and slightly too long to fit in the old dishwasher space. As I pondered solutions, I realized that adding wheels would give the needed height and take care of the issues. I'm already loving the extra work space and storage areas - rolling dough on this space will be a dream!

The walls also received a fresh coat of Bavarian Oak, and the windows received some fresh white too. I'll attack Phase 2 (lower cabinets) on the next rainy day.

Torchwood

Outside the government, beyond the police. Fighting for the future on behalf of the human race. The 21st century is when everything changes - and we've got to be ready.

BBC America puts out some of my favorite shows. I first discovered the new Doctor Who on the Syfy Network, and when I heard about Torchwood I couldn't wait to check it out. Its a spin-off of Doctor Who that's set in Cardiff, England. Led by the rouge-ish Captain Jack Harkness, the team chases down aliens that have entered our world via The Rift - a split in the space-time continuum.

Thank goodness for my public library - they carry the DVD sets and I've loved every minute of this series. Gwen, Owen, Tashiko, and Ianto bring personality and life to the crazy world of Captain Jack. Gwen is clearly the heart of the team, doing her best to have a life outside a job that could easily consume her. Bits and pieces are revealed slowly about each character, and I'm thoroughly engaged through each episode. Plus, they drink more coffee than tea - that just makes me smile.

Torchwood consistently puts a new spin on standard sci-fi story lines such as time travel, alien pregnancy, abductions, and even resurrections. The characters drive the show - its truly a pleasure to watch each episode, and I've done my best to savor these first two seasons and not rush through them.

I've heard a rumor that a version of Torchwood might be made in the US, but I can't imagine it would be quite the same. Brits are accustomed to a completely different style of show and allow characters a bit more, err, freedom . . . Captain Jack just wouldn't be the same. We'll see what happens, I suppose.

Thinking about Family

I've been rather occupied with outdoor projects of late, and as I spray painted all the bits of metal in sight I couldn't help but think about one of my grandmother's. Mama Sue (my father's mother) was a Southern Lady in every sense of the word. She wore hose and heels her entire life - I never saw her in a pair of pants - and knew everyone in her small Arkansas town. There were many aspects of her life I found inspiring, but the one that may jumped out at me recently was her love of spray paint.

Seriously.

Childhood summer vacations always included a trip to Lepanto, Arkansas to visit Mama Sue. Oh my, the memories! Exploring back alleys, searching for frogs, playing in the sprawling yard - and examining the latest spray painted creation Mama Sue had added her to her collection. Nothing was safe - furniture, wood work, even those indoor potpourri ball-y things. It was one of the many ways she expressed her style (the spray paint often included glitter - gotta have that bling).

As I added the latest coat of spray paint to her chandelier that now sits in a prized place of my garden, I reminisced with lots of love on a lady that continues to urge me to boldly explore my own creative streak.

She also introduced me to coffee (aka 'boo-ley cool-ey") when I was 5 - but that's a story for another time.