strike that

and the devil makes three

PD and I lived together in her house in Eugene when I was in grad school. It was the funnest living arrangement ever. We had spontaneous dance parties and sometimes we put on evening gowns to make dinner. After grad school she was supposed to move to Portland but instead she moved to Santa Rosa, for love or something, and that was that I thought.

But then she got offered a summer internship at a kickass firm up here, the sort of firm that never has interns and has approximately one job opening per year for which nine thousand people apply. So she showed up in her orange car Ollie, with her speedy blue bike and a flat of green tomatoes, and now I have a housemate. Which is Grand. Because she is awesome, and handy, and because I really like living with people, as I may have mentioned, and because already having a housemate has inspired me to fix my too-long shower curtains and my disorganized basement and my questionable kitchen inventory.

Also, so far, I’ve just about talked her head off, because it’s been kind of quiet around my place of late. Look at this loaf of bread I got! I exclaim, as if I’m four, when I get home - as if it’s the most exciting thing in the world, this loaf of bread. But I do love bread, and I did get a really delightful cinnamon loaf from the Thursday farmer’s market down the street, and it’s nice to share that with someone. Look at this milk in a glass bottle! Look at the bookcase I found on the corner! Look where I might put this chair!

If the endless exclamation doesn’t drive her away, she’s planning to reside in the back bedroom for three months. Plans include beer on the front steps, plumbing the kitchen, and the making of blueberry jam. Hazzah.

posted by tortaluga @ 3:11 PM 0 comments

itching

The insides of my arms from wrists to elbows are a mess of hot pink angry splotches, because this weekend I was attacked by bedstraw. I guess, more accurately, I was the attacker. I pulled it out by the armful. Pulling bedstraw is very satisfying because it clings to its neighbors like velcro, but then comes free all at once in long sticky tendrils. It rolls into mean bundles that bite your arms on the way to the yard waste bin.

I know that there are more critical things to fix about my house. The plumbing, for example. The framing. The insulation. Things that would make it a safer, easier, more pleasant place to live. But the sun comes out and I can hear the weeds growing. I’ve already missed my window for planting peas. The garden isn’t waiting for me to get my shit together.

May, who lived in what is now my house for approximately as long as I have been alive, put a lot of work into the small amount of land that surrounds it. It’s a third of a tax lot; a twentieth of an acre. But the back was built for vegetables – raised beds, fertile soil, enviable solar access - and the front is in endless bloom. Each time I think I’ve fully inventoried the green, something new and unexpected shoots up: grape hyacinth, trillium, fringecup, columbine. This kind of garden doesn’t happen on its own. A few months of neglect could ruin years of May’s work.

So yesterday, back from a weekend of playing with Operaman and his kids, I pulled on my ladybug boots and dove in. Late showers have made things muddy and lush. It took two hours just to clear the invasive geraniums, whose poky red stems were choking my bleeding hearts. I raked the newly built compost bin. I filed and oiled my Felcos.

And this week, maybe, I’ll finally get around to calling someone about the sewer. But for sure I’ll sink the pole beans in, and the carrots, and the cukes. For sure I’ll cut back the butterfly bush. It’s still gray and wet but it’s spring one way or another.

posted by tortaluga @ 12:20 PM 3 comments

heart grown fonder?

There were – and I didn’t look this up, so I’m just going by gut feeling – nineteen thousand four hundred eighty six days in a row of gray skies and rain in Portland this fall-winter-spring, and they’ve ended. They’ve ended with a heat so intense that all the orange and yellow petals fell off my tulips, every petal off of every tulip in a single day, so that the bright green still-young stalks are left sticking straight up from a festive bed of discarded flower parts.

And that, along with the fact that I have a new house and a new old boyfriend, is the reason I haven’t been blogging. That and the conclusion that the “house blog” thing wasn’t very interesting. But this past weekend I talked to the friend I have known the longest of anyone on the planet, and she told me to start again. And she’s seen me through some pretty awkward times, like the time when we had a secret club, and the time when we didn’t go to junior prom together, and the time when we both got drunk at Spring Fling and acted inappropriately. So I try to do what she asks.

Now then. I will here test out a participatory post, to see if anyone is even still around.

Question for you, to chart the coming of spring in a random collection of U.S. locales:
What are you wearing today?

posted by tortaluga @ 3:42 PM 16 comments