Happy Flowerth of July!

 

PEW! PEW! PEWPEWPEW!

["Aww! Cute little ones!"]

 

paTOP! paTOP! Fsssssshhhhhh KAPOW!!

["WHOA! Didn't expect that one to come out amongst the others!"]

KARSH! KIRSH! HHHWWWWOOOOOOOO!!

["Ooh pretty! This is probably the grand finale!"]

Shoop! Shoop! Shoop! Fizzzzzzzz!

["Oh they surprised me again! Nice little interlude!"]

kaTOE! kaTOETOETOE! TOE!

["OHLOOKATALLOFTHEM!!"]

I could do this all day. 

If only we could grow Tom Thumb donuts, I'd never have to go out for the 4th of July again.

Thanks, Claude

I spoke a bit awhile ago about some flower seeds that I sent home from Claude Monet's garden during my trip to Giverny, France last year. We planted them all, and we've had a lovely block of foliage in our garden for a few weeks now, but no flowers.  Finally, today I went out to go check (I've actually checked about three times a day for the last couple weeks) and I saw my very first bloom. I had to tell you all right away.

Isn't she lovely? I have no idea what kind of flower she is, but I sure do like her. I'll name her Claudette after the man who planted her great-great-great-great-great (about 50 seasons worth of great) grandparents years and years ago.

This week has been hard.  For reasons beyond my control, I lost my summer job. Even though I hated it and am glad to be moving on to pursue much more promising opportunities, it's been hard to shake the sadness and allow myself follow my summer rule of "do something blogworthy every day." Claudette couldn't have come at a better time. 

Burritos and Garden Center Employees Who Smell Like My Grandfather

There’s a new, tiny, authentic Mexican diner in La Crosse called “Burritos House”, and that’s really how the name of the place is written—no punctuation, nothing fancy, just “Burritos House.” Which, of course, makes me wonder, How am I supposed to read this? Should I look at it as a poor translation meaning “The House of Burritos?” Could it mean “The Burrito House,” a place to buy burritos?  My favorite translation, which I choose to continue to imagine, is “Burrito’s House”—a tiny house owned by a giant burrito, ironically named Burrito, and he’s inviting us inside to taste his culinary specialty, you guessed it: burritos.  I like the cut of your jib, Burrito. (5 points!)

I was told by an outside source that before I tried Burrito’s specialty, I should definitely eat the seasoned pork tacos with the salsa verde. So I did.  And let me tell you: I would kill a man and knock down and old woman on a walker to receive another ethereal (5 points!) bite of something, anything, slathered with that salsa verde. Sweet fancy Moses.

[I washed it down with some delicious Mexican apple soda. Mmmmmmmmm.]

After lunch, I took a quick trip down to my favorite garden center looking for some new cilantro plants. I was helped by a sweaty employee in a dirty shirt who smelled like my grandpa. First the talk was just, you know, “D’you have any cilantro?” but then somehow turned into him and I traipsing around the garden center, and the sweaty employee telling me all the cool things about his favorite plants. 

Apparently his mother used to keep scented geranium bushes in the house, and whenever she had company, she would rub the leaves together and the scent would spread throughout the whole house.  Also, some fruit-bearing trees that are kept in really good soil in perfect conditions and are fed well won’t bear fruit because they’re too comfortable. They get too content and become lazy, so they don’t want to go through the work of bearing fruit. So what this sweaty employee likes to do is take a child’s plastic bat and start smacking the crap out of the tree’s trunk, and every time it starts producing fruit by the next season. I like this guy.

[I of course didn’t take any pictures while I was there, so here’s a shot of the four new lavender plants we put on the side of our house. Lovely, aren’t they?]

I’ll admit, I was in a rut this week. The “do something blogworthy every day” idea flew out the window and was replaced by a three-day pity party, in which I had nothing to blog about besides complaints, so I didn’t.  It's nice to know that, when the Gulf of Mexico is being destroyed, when it seems like more and more people hate each other every day, when personal problems eat you up, and all you'd like to do is fix all the world's problems...there's still Burritos House, lavender, and sweaty Garden Center employees who would like to tell you about nicely whacking trees with a baseball bat.

A Weekend of Living Things and Rain

I remember my high school science teacher who would allow us, every Monday, to share what happened the past weekend.  Everyone would share their weekend stories, and when it came to me (the attention-prostitute that I am), I spewed the most entertaining and titillating story I could possibly muster.  It was during this weekly ritual that I first spoke of the Popcorn Day dream, actually.

Well, it’s Monday, and in the name of high school science, I will share what I did this weekend.

It was rather rainy weekend. 

[Notice the water drops in the birdbath. And the fact that I moved my lavender plant to a bigger pot. He looks much more comfortable in there.]

And on this wet Saturday, I decided to give four potted plants THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES.

First a back story on these four. When I was in France last summer, I took a day trip up from Paris to Giverny, the wonderful little town that has the pleasure of holding Monet’s famous gardens (read about my time here).  After taking giant, pleasurable gulps of Monet’s ethereal (5 points!) property, I—a believer in avoiding gift shops at all costs, for they more little more to me than overpriced circuses full of knicks and knacks that will only end up in a box that I will feel guilty at even the thought of throwing away, so they take up space in a closet, accumulating dust from years and years of not throwing a stupid Mt. Rushmore magnet away—stopped inside the Monet gift shop.

I cringe when I admit that it was wonderful.

BUT IT REALLY WAS. They had lovely Monet prints and an item that intrigued me so that I couldn’t reach into my under-the-pants money protector fast enough: seeds from actual flowers in Monet’s garden. This is no stupid key chain or printed shot glass; THIS IS AMAZING.

So I bought them. And I gifted them to my mom when I got home, four packets of four different kinds of seeds for a mix of four different colors of flowers. And this summer we planted them.

I care for these seedlings so very much, watering them every day on our protected front porch, encouraging them to someday bloom. Oh baby.

Anyway, as it was raining this weekend, I took them out a little farther to see what it was like to be watered by the Heavens. I think they loved it.

My mom and I also took a trip to a wonderful garden store and went crazy buying herbs. We had originally planned to buy just Rosemary and Thyme—to bring my nose back, again, to Provence, where stopping on the side of the road on a hot, dry day and taking a whiff of the shrubs proved that all is probably okay with the world because Rosemary and Thyme grow in the ditches in France.

But we also fell in love with Mint, Spearmint, Cinnamon Basil, and Chamomile. Six herbs.

I wasted no time (for all of you who made the joke “I wasted no thyme,” and giggled to yourselves, shame on you) putting the herbs to good use.  Along with some now herb-infused spaghetti, I also made tea with the fresh Spearmint and Chamomile. D-lish.

And along with power-cleaning our deck, reading part of the Pray section of Eat, Pray, Love, and acting once again as my parent’s live-in Tech Support, that was my weekend.

First Day of Popcorn Dayness

I set out today fervent on doing something blogworthy. Yesterday's post released in me a drive to do something blogworthy every day this summer, and gall darnit, I'm gunna.

One of my favorite memories from my Europe trip last summer was walking through lavender fields in the Provence region of France. Every whiff of lavender that comes near me since then has brought me right back to that lavender farm, when all was right with the world, my nostrils happily burning with a day-long scent of that warm, purple plant. 

In the midst of the 24-hour pity party I had yesterday, I smelled lavender drifting in from my window. Strange, given that no one around us grows lavender. I'm going to buy some lavender plants tomorrow, I decided.

And here we are, 12:14 on a Wednesday afternoon, and I just bought two wonderful pots of lavender. It requires full sunlight, so the first I moved to a nicer pot and planted on my deck, and the second right outside my bedroom window.

Yum. A summer full of Popcorn Dayness, here I come!