I have seeds to share!

I have seeds to share? Have you looked at my garden or garden photos and wanted some of my plants? I’d down to trade seeds (or maybe something else?) for my seeds. Be warned that I think my yard is a weird micro-climate due to our giant sheltering Himalayan Cedar. Here’s what I have:

Calendula-all the ones in my yard grow yellow.

Borage-These are blue and lighter blue to white depending on where in the yard they grow.

Love-in-a-mist- these range from blue to white.

More Love-in-a-Mist

Walking Onion- I only have a few of these

These things are fun! They can be used as scallions when they are young or like shallots when they are big. I only have a few sets of 3 so I can’t spread as much cheer with these as I would hope.

My trillium had seeds this year! These are beatufil plants but can be hard to grown.

If you would like any of these, let me know! You can e-mail me at alexATsmallworldbuttonsDOTcom

Also, for a limited time I am offering my craft roasted coffee. Go here for delicious coffee.

Small World Blend coffee

 

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Sad stuff and cat pictures…

My sister’s bike was stolen. It was locked up in her backyard in Kenton (North Portland) It is a dark green Terry. The really sad thing is that bikes are really hard to find for short ladies. Gr. Anyway, if you see this bike let me know.

There is a special place in hell for bike thieves, indeed!

At least cats are still cute.

This is what you see out of our kitchen window. The next door neighbors have a cat named Miss Ohio (Don't ask) She often stares out the window at me. She looks a bit like Nermal and is sort of the kid sister to Jackie and OJ. Also, if you look close you can see that their curtains have cats on them...only on the outside, so we can see it!

 

Jackie and OJ have been sleeping on the shady side of the house IN THE DIRT. It makes me sad. Jackie could be curled up with me but no, he wants to wallow in the dirt with his dirty brother cat.

Also, I finally got around the releases the day lilies that have been hating their existence under the Himalayan Cedar. I don’t know why I planted the lilies there. I just thought it was a  waste to have them tucked in the back of the house and figured I’d move them. That was before I got a grasp on gardening I guess. I placed them across the front of the house interspersed with the tiny white and purple irises. At least we will have plants that are span two season.

I’m looking forward to Mercury going direct on the 26th. How about you?

Last week was expensive. I spent about $400 in button parts, $400 buying all new toner colors, new laser paper, and a bunch of postal stamps. There were a couple other small expenses. I had the money, I just hate it when I have to spend all of it at once. ugh. So, if you were thinking of ordering buttons, now would be a good time. I’d like to have a little extra cash before my trip east at the end of September.

Stuff that happened at my house this week:

-Paul and I ate the first tomoto from our garden. There are seriously few things tastier than standing in the garden barefoot and eating a freshly ripened sun warmed tomato. I planted lots of tomatoes because I’m going to can them to make soup in the winter.

-I have been picking blackberries from the tiny patch in our back yard and I plan to make jam out of them instead of pie. I always make pie, eat one piece, and then try to get other people to eat it because I’m just not a sweets person. I have all these scratches on my arms from picking blackberries and I worry that people will think I’m a cutter!

-We had two lovely folks staying in the guest cave for a few days. They just got back to the US from WWOOFing in New Zealand. You can check out their blog about their adventure here. On their last day they made us a great meal and then…

-OJ jumped up on the table to get attention/entertain us. We had this berry basket on the table with candy and weird toys left over from the symposium. There were 3 or 4 DumDum lollypops in it and OJ would pick them out with his paws and drop them on the table. Sometimes he would chew on the end of the stick, sometimes not. But, if you put the lollypops back in the basket he would fish them out again. What a silly cat!

-Paul has to leave for work at 6:30am and he always comes up stairs to hug me and give me a kiss goodbye. Today, he came up stairs as usual and when he  let go he grabbed something under my pillow…there was a Sharpie there. Then he told me the Sharpie Fairy must have came to visit. I checked my mouth to make sure I had all my teeth! My hair is getting long enough again to put it up with pens so I think one must have fallen out in bed. it still made me giggle this morning to think about.

-I decided to tweak Brainscan: Nine Stories and Brainscan: it’s complicated and release them as issue numbers later this year. Hooray for tiny zines that require me to do a lot of work. I’m a glutton for that.

-I went to the book store at the community college down the street to buy a pen and a new notebook. I’ve joined a group on facebook where we plan to write 15 minutes everyday in September. Let me know if you want to join. I plan on using it to work on the fiction stuff for the split zine I agreed to do. I was also thinking I could spend a week using that 15 minutes to write down recipes for the cookzine I have been meaning to do.

Speaking of cooking…I’m going to go think about what to make for dinner tonight. We got out Organics to You box yesterday and we have some many vegetables!

Post symposium post where I don’t really talk about the symposium…

So, the symposium was over a few weeks ago. I took a much needed trip to the Riverhouse and have slowly be getting my house and life back in order. I think the symposium was a hit this year. I’ll have more to talk about later. The new space had its problems but as someone put it “it seems more like a space the symposium should be in.” The last 10 years were on a campus of a university that may have given it a stuffy, institution feel. In hindsight, I’m pretty happy with the space and the people we worked with there. We had our post symposium wrap up meeting/reward dinner at Portobello, a fancy vegan restaurant, last night. It was good to talk about things.

We are already scheduling a meeting for next year on September 18th at the IPRC.

Other than that, Portland is starting to feel like autumn, even thought it is pretty warm this week. I haven’t spent enough time in my yard but I did take some photos:

Despite Paul taunting the artichokes with how he is going to eat them, a few of them managed to go to thistle.

We have a small bit of invasive blackberries at the back corner of the yard. We didn't trim it back enough this year so we should have a good harvest. We usually get enought for a black berry pie made with my great-grandmother's crust recipe. This was the first bowl full and I just clean them and throw them into the freezer until there is enough for pie. maybe I'll make jam this year?

 

We used to have a lot more calendula in the yard. I have planted other things and now they are disappearing. I'll have to fix that.

Paul may have been taunting the artichokes about eating them, but I'm showering the hops with praise and a glimpse at their glorious future in my home brewed beer!

 

fairy wand peeking through my front fence. I think I'm finally going to transplate some daiy lillies there. They are miserable under the cedar tree, even though they get a lot of sunlight.

veg garden from the porch. It only gets afternoon sun.

 

Veg garden from another corner

Trailing pumpkin that only has one pumpkin growing.

 

Sunflowers in the veg garden!

 

Sunflowers on the porch.

OJ hanging out under the pation table and next to the hops.

 

He is a silly kitten.

I had some food pictures I was gonna post but I’ll post those tomorrow. I made saffron rice and baked it with herbed squash and tomatoes over it. It was super yummy. I also gathered up my squash flowers and, after giz got all the ants out,  stuffed them with cashew cheeze and lightly friend them with a sort of fresh herb tempura batter. They were really good!

If you need me I’ll be in the garden…

I’ve been busy! Several large buttons orders and my garden have been most of it.

bleedings heards

trillium

comfrey

wild ginger flower

OJ in the garden

To check out more photos from my yard go to my facebook gallery here.

Also, I really need to redesign my blog but I don’t have the time so this is what you get.

Flowers, flowers, and more flowers!

There is a patch of blackberries that grows in the corner of my yard. Blackberries are crazy invasive but this bush and I have an "understanding". Meaning that, when it starts to grow out of the corner I will chop it up.

Some borage before it blooms

tops of blooming chives

My new comfrey that I picked up at the farmer's market.

more comfrey

delphinium

Stumptown Vegans podcast and how I grow hops!

So, a few weeks ago I was a host on the Stumptown Vegans podcast .Well, the show is up in all its sugar crashy-ness. Go here if you want to listen.

And for photos. Here’s the trellis I made for my Cascade Hop plants. The twine is attached to an old box springs I use in my garden one one end and to the upstairs bathroom window. this should give them more lights, make a canope at the back door, and be super easy to harvest by just tossing down the twine!

This was a few weeks ago. I'll post a new photo soon!

looking up the side of my house...noitce the plumbing on the outside of the house.

Paul and I are headed up to the Riverhouse for some time together before I head up there for the weekend with whoever wants to come.

two of my favorites…

Another busy week of visitors and button work. There was even a wedding mixed in there too!

Besides all the irises that ring my yard there are two other plants that show up every year: Egyptian Walking Onions and Love-In-A-Mist. They have been here longer than I have and I am happy to see them ever year!

Egyptian Walking Onions are awesome! They can be eaten young like green onions or you can let them grow and eat them like shallots. If you let them grow they make their own little bulbs at the top and send out weird alien spindly shoots that form yet more bulbs! The bulbs and shoots eventually weigh down the plant or reach the ground and plant themselves, hence, “walking”. I like that they sort of meander around my yard from place to play. I also send off bulbs to people to start their own walking garden. Let me know if you would like some.

these onions were made for walking...ok, that was dumb. I'm sorry.

more!

Love-In-A-Mist reminds me of two things; that the plant looks like it should grow underwater, and that my ex-boyfriend had them growing outside his cottage when I was 18. They are one of the first green things to start growing in my yard each year and shoot up fluffy, fuzzy stems that eventually form intricate blue star shaped flowers. They are just so dreamy to me!

Love in a Mist easily reseeds itself which is great. I wonder if these plants are completely adapted to grow under my cedar tree because my neighbor tried to get some to grow in her yard and it didn’t work as well. At any rate, I love these reseeding annuals.

I made a facebook photo album of the cats at my house. I figure if I’m becoming a crazy cat lady then why not document it?

Just foxgloves…and a cat.

I love foxgloves! They make me really happy. A few years ago I planted some pink foxglove seeds and since then they have reseeded and filled my yard with a wide variety of colors. here are some current foxgloves! It might just be an all garden shots for awhile.

Foxgloves in the Hummingbird Garden. There's also a bit of a dephinium there too.

I saw some blue sky a week or so ago! This is one of the neat foxglves that changes from pink at the bottom to yellow at the top.

closer look at the color change.

speckled pink!

Ok, not all plants. OJ has taken to sleeping outside when it’s not to cold or rainy. I went out to put the mail in the post box and I found him curled up in the irises!

What? I heard it was a flower BED!

a yawning jungle cat!

Just irises

I can’t really take credit for the amazing irises that ring my yard. They were there long before I was. I just try to separate them every few years and keep the dead ones trimmed off. Iris season is almost over his year I thought I would try to take photos of all the different kind of irises in my yard and I think I may have gotten them all, but I’m not sure. I thought I might share these images with others.

I’ll probably have another such posting  just off foxgolves because they are everywhere this year and in lots of different colors!