Adventures in Mama-Land

If you’re looking at this picture and thinking “cute kid,” you are NOT a stroller junkie.  That’s how you can tell. Now, you may have thought my days as a curbside-spotting stroller junkie were over… I definitely did.  But that was before the fortuitous shiva call (oops – okay, I truly am sorry for their loss!) this afternoon that led me to this baby… the Bugaboo Bee . I have been dreaming of a bugaboo falling into my lap, but thinking it would be long after I was done having little kids.  It takes a while before premium strollers start being available curbside.  Now, this is definitely NOT the bugaboo I’ve been dreaming of, but the thing is – it works amazingly well!  It is very small and very light, and that may be exactly what I need at a stage of my life where my kids are mostly walking everywhere.  There is not a mark on it; all buckles, straps, the basket, etc., are pristine.  (And yes, it was definitely being given away – I have no idea...

It’s July, and welcome once again to Things That Hang! Here, we have a tomato happily growing in my Vesey’s Revolutionary Planter (year 2 in my garden).  Running out of room for this plant, actually; it’s hanging pretty low and kind of encroaching on one of my other tomato plants. Experimental hanging zucchini and tomato – the tomato is hanging from the bottom of a regular (read: FREE) hanging plastic planter that I found at the curb last year.  It’s a good-sized pot with a single drainage hole in the centre.  That’s where I stuck the tomato in:  forget those fancy upside-down gadgets and just get yourself a POT with a HOLE in it.    Easy, cheap! When I hung it up on the trellis, however, I realized the pot had cracked on the bottom over the winter (drat), so I’ll need to chuck it after this season, but meanwhile, it’s holding in the soil and tomato and doing just fine, as is the zuke, which has flowers but no actual zucchinis so far.  I...

(in case you’re new here, sub-i = sub-irrigated = what’s usually known as self-watering, which is a misnomer I won’t get into because it’s too tedious to believe) If you want to read more about sub-irrigation, what it’s good for, why I love it, and how I’ve made inexpensive sub-irrigated planters in the past, just click on the “Sub-I” label beneath this post or at left (or, okay, just click here ).  If you live anywhere that watering is not always possible, sub-i planters let you keep on growing by wasting almost no water; it ALL goes to the roots, not in the air, on the leaves, or anywhere else. So I had these two planters sitting around.  I forget where I got them – free or cheap or at the curb somewhere, no doubt.  There are no holes in the bottom of them, which suits this project just fine.  I also had two large pots sitting around (from a similarly unremembered source), with holes in the bottom, that fit inside pretty unobtrusively.  Okay, kind of funny...

This story came to me yesterday and Naomi loved it because her name is in it. It’s all about our family’s habit of finding some of our favouritest things ever at the curbs of other people’s houses. I thought if there were any other trash-pickin’ families, they might enjoy it, too. Here’s a free JPG preview; yes, the illustrations are pure clip art. (All offers of free original artwork will be accepted… in case my sister Sara is reading this, who made a solemn vow as a toddler that when we grew up, I would write children’s stories and she would illustrate them.) Meanwhile, the original is available in full sized PDF, without watermarks, by leaving a comment with your email address. All comments are moderated, so your email address will not be seen by anyone other than me.

That’s all I’m going to say.  Okay, not quite .  Because, well, the INGRATITUDE of some people. When I write an article about somebody for our friendly local Jewish newspaper, I usually BECOME the paper for that person or organization.  From then on, whenever something exciting is going on in that person or organization’s life, I am the “go-to person” for media coverage. I swear, I NEVER represent myself as more than the humble freelancer that I am.  I love being a freelancer – note the word “FREE” as in “I have the freedom to ignore you and your organization when I’m not receiving money to pay attention to it.”  It’s largely a committment-free life, which is good, because most of these people are not folks I want to commit to.  Mostly because every person and organization have basically the same events:  galas, inaugurations, speakers, maybe a heart-breaking or heart-wrenching thing or two.  I have covered countless “show support for ...

These pics were taken at dusk yesterday so if they’re a little dusky, well… yes. Death of a clematis.  The same Nelly Moser flower seen in its full glory just last week… here . But this week, we have PEAS!  Well, okay, PEA.  A few are flowering, and if we can wait patiently, we will have peas.  If the weather doesn’t heat up again too quickly.   Back garden chaos.  This is the area just to the right (north) of the composter, and it shows, because everything in this strip goes a little wild.  Crammed into this picture, we have “Black Lace” Elderberry Tree (far left, slightly dark leaves, but new leaves are bright green, so it doesn’t show up well yet), a few hostas (freebie last year), a golden tansy (volunteer from the other side of the garden), lime thyme (mmm… smells delicious!), bee balm (freebie), sweet williams (freebie from seed), goldenrod (bought), a couple of daylilies and a bunch of ivy (there when we moved it, but boy has it SPREAD...

Well, who wouldn’t be optimistic with an amazing clematis like this in bloom??? I love the motif of miniature bulldozer juxtaposed with natural wonders… something about “paving paradise”, but then, I’m tired. Here’s the rest of the clematis.  The story is – I bought two clematises on sale at the end of the season two years ago.  One is Nelly Moser and one is The President.  I planted them in what I thought was a good spot (feet in damp shade, head in the sun), but alas, it was too late.  They died. Except not quite.  Last year, Nelly came back and gave me two blooms – here’s one of them.  Not a sign of the President anywhere. This year, not only is Nelly back with a vengeance – that’s what the flower shown here is – but there is a single stem creeping up behind her that looks suspiciously darker in colour.  It won’t flower this year; in fact, Nelly is promising only one more bloom again this time, but the things have leafed out tremend...

A brand-new big-boy beddie!!! Nighty-night!   (ha ha ha ha…) Excuse my wishful thinking.  As every parent of a big kid knows, the big-kid bed transition is the time they realize you can’t MAKE them go to sleep.  You can’t even MAKE them stay in their room. Since we assembled this bed last Friday, I have been convincing him to stay in the bed using a random and mutually-stressful combination of nursing him to sleep, cuddles, spankings, intimidation, shouting (I’m not proud of it, but there it is) and positive reinforcement (peeking in to “catch him in the act” of actually STAYING in the thing). Oh, plus we brought up the gate for the door, so at least he can’t get too far ‘till he learns to climb over it.  The reason we set up the bed now, by the way, is because he was climbing out of his crib onto the dresser.  Rather than put him in that unsafe situation, we decided to abolish the crib once and for all. Anybody need a crib???

Finally got all three  sub-i planters ramped up into productivity mode.  I made these three last summer.  I’ll throw in some links below about how they were made, because it is SO unbelievably inexpensive to make them and so rewarding compared to growing stuff in plain old pots.  Do a test, if you don’t believe me.  Buy two identical seedlings and stick one in a pot and one in a cheapo sub-i planter, and then get back to me about which one survived the summer.  Sub-irrigation (aka “self-watering” – a misnomer unless your planter has a hose connection and/or legs), is actually, secretly, deep down, my Grand-Scheme of Things Plan, capital P, for gardening in Israel.  Water is so precious there, of course, that you can’t just throw it in the air and hope stuff gets wet, like we do here.  But I hope, using some combination of sub-i planters and grey water (ie milchig and pareve dishwater, and perhaps laundry rinse water as well), that at least a f...

I’ve been SO good.  So very, very good about not acquiring any new carriages.  But sometimes, it’s just stroller karma, and I can’t help it. When you get rid of five carriages you don’t want (old Pliko, missing fabric; Bertini frame, broken brake; Bertini frame & seat, bent axle; huge pink double jogger, too heavy & skunk-smelly), it’s just bashert (foreordained) that a new one will find you… Out walking on Glen Cedar today (with the pretty-good navy BabyTrend side-by-side double my mother found at the curb for me!), I found an older-model Peg Perego Tender Twin front-to-back double.  The problem:  how to schlep the HUGE Peg Perego home with us?  No problem!  It folded pretty smoothly and I stashed it on top of the hood of the BabyTrend to bring it home and test it out.  We were an extra-wide load,  however, and I didn’t even bother trying to wheel the wide double with the wider folded double into either of the stores we visited...

Garden magazine, Shabbos.  Okay, note to self, do not read garden magazines on Shabbos.  They make me lustful.  And there it was:  Musa acuminata “Siam Ruby” – a big red banana.  The garden magazine described this thing and I fell in love. Ten, today, at Plant World’s annual 40% off sale – well, I spotted ONE left on the shelf.  (okay, when I looked again, there were two… that’s not the point!). It has deep-red leaves with splotches of chartreuse.  Okay, it looks a bit like a canna, but it’s not… it’s a BANANA.  Bananas come from one of two geni – musa or ensete .  I believe the most common banana, the ones we eat, are called musa basjoo.  Mine is closely related, but apparently flowers very rarely and will likely never bear fruit.  It can also grow from 6-8 feet, given the opportunity… which it will likely never have here.     And here it is in my very own driveway…!  I wish I did have two, but perhaps if i...