May Was...

...almost perfect.

With a little bit of life thrown in for good measure.

Old Things

We have a hard and fast rule in our house:  no clutter.  If items are to be retained, they are to be used.  We have a low tolerance for knick-knacks (a.k.a. "dust catchers") and we almost constantly have a brown paper grocery bag behind our bedroom door to catch donations to Goodwill.  Of course that tactic is not without side effects, as a Goodwill "drop off" almost always results in a Goodwill "pop-in," but generally we are big proponents of weeding out the unnecessary things of life.

Now, I fully admit, I was not born having an abhorrence to clutter.  In fact, pretty much the opposite.  I have learned everything I know about the art of decluttering from my husband, whom (as I mentioned earlier), would rather be living off the grid in a yurt.  While that is probably unlikely, at least on a full-time basis, the ideal of that lifestyle does tend to lead one to be a minimalist.  

Learning to declutter has not been easy.  At times, I have rather painfully learned to let things go.  I have made difficult decisions.  But I have also learned that if I am going to keep something, I'd better find a way to use it.  Thus, we play with our post-war Lionel trains and use antique quilts on our bed and sometimes our nice linens get wine stains on them that have to be carefully removed.

So when my cousin sent a cutwork tablecloth to me that had been shut in her cedar chest for years, I knew I had to find a use for it.  As we still have a preschooler at the dinner table, I'm not quite ready to use it for its intended purpose, but I did find a way to repurpose it instead.  It now adorns the outside of my cedar chest, and lightens up our tiny bedroom in new ways.  

We aren't quite sure who made the tablecloth.  It may have been my cousin's grandmother-in-law, from whom she received it.  Or it may have been someone else.  At any rate, decades later, it is being used again!

 

May Gardens...

...are my favorite.  Of course I still don't have produce from the vegetable gardens (the lettuce is close) but my flowers are blooming and we've had a cool spell and I am happy.

I am also exhausted.  We have done so much work on the yard and gardens this year.  When I say I've yard work, what I really mean is landscaping.  When I say exhausted, I mean of the type that when your husband gets home, he takes one look at you and says "I'll do dinner tonight."  Generally I enjoyed every minute, but there were a couple of low spots.  I can't decided if the worst of it was accidentally eviscerating a muskrat while dredging the creek or transplanting a well-established Oregon grape.  The muskrat was grosser, but the Oregon grape left me covered in tiny puncture wounds that resembled a rash from a tropical disease on my arms.  My husband meanwhile has completely redone the patio, which involved hauling tons of dirt and trying to find places around the yard to stash it!

My Mother's Day garden--the north bed redone!

The infamous Oregon grape in the corner.

We are still not done. This is the pile of debris from the creek, as well as the wind storm last night that wrecked havoc on the willows.  I have a suspicion that I need to dredge out at least one to two more tarp fulls of creek detritis before the creek is completely free flowing again.

Meanwhile my husband still has to tackle this little project to finish off the new patio (a.k.a. my Tuscan plaza!).

But I also found some time to be crafty.  I have a tiny little obsession with succulents and I made this little planter in a cassarole dish that was given to us a wedding present but was cracked in shipping.  It's the perfect size for a table centerpiece!

I've also been trying to weed and thin the south perennial beds, but have not made as much progress as I would like.  It hasn't stopped the flowers from blooming wonderfully though!

One of the last of the tulips

And the first of the iris!

And then there is my little potager.  I am still somewhat in shock that almost everything (except the squash and beans) is planted.  This could be my best year ever!

Tomato growing in the wall o' water!

The workhorse of the garden.

Salmon swimming upstream through the garlic!

I finished up today by cleaning my "woman cave."  My potting table isn't quite as pretty as the ones I have on my Pinterest board, but it's functional and was made with love by my husband (Ok, it was actually his work bench until he wanted a new one and gave me this one, but he did make it and it is great)!

My succulent centerpiece that I made last summer.

Two Flat Day

I am a statistician.  While I am sometimes annoyed or pleasantly surprised by the rare event, I am also somewhat intrigued by the outliers of life.  I'm not sure if yesterday's events actually classify as outliers, though, as there is probably a strong correlation between flat tires and traveling in a full vehicle on bald tires over rocky roads.  At any rate my colleagues and I experienced the rare two-flat day while on a reconnisance trip for a grant collaboration at the Zumwalt Prairie Reserve in Wallowa County, OR.

Flat #1

Flat #2

Despite the two flat day, moods remained high.  Perhaps it was because we were at one of the most beautiful places in the West.  It was early spring, the mountains were full of snow, and the first wildflowers were blooming in the prairie.

Prairie Smoke

Larkspur

Bounded on the north by the Grand Ronde River canyon, the east by Hell's Canyon of the Snake River, the west by the Blue Mountains, and the south by the Wallowas, the Zumwalt Prairie is a distinct and geographically isolated remnant of the northern Rocky Mountain bunchgrass prairie system.  While some of the land was plowed at one point, the land has been primarily used for grazing and few true remnants of native prairie remain.  The Nature Conservancy purchased the Zumwalt Prairie in two parcels, and has made some progress restoring the landscape.

This is a depopulated landscape.  The Nez Perce--Nimi-ipuu--were the first inhabitants of the land.  This is the land of Chief Joseph.  After the 1877 war, the land was divided into 160 acre homestead parcels.  By the 1920s, over 30 rural schools served the area.  Then came the Depression, and Wallowa County never recovered.  To this day, unemployment and poverty remain high, and the rural schools have now been turned to bunkhouses for the Nature Conservancy volunteers.

If you can believe it, this farm had telephone access in the 30s, but today can be reached only by satellite phone.  Our cell phones were of little use when the first flat occurred, but that didn't matter.   It wasn't such a bad day at work after all, and it ended in the best possible way ever--at Terminal Gravity brew pub!     

Former school house

Barn at Summer Camp

 

Ground squirrel

Formerly a two-seater outhouse!

The "suicide" elk--found with his head in a pond!

Barn swallows

Elk herd on the horizon

Monuments placed by the Nez Perce and thought to be trail makers.

Perception vs Reality

I could say a lot on this topic, but I'll restrict my comments to the vegetable garden.

This is the rhubarb and squash bed according to the plans so carefully made in January on my Grow Planner iPad application:

This is the way the bed actually looks (minus the squash, which I haven't planted yet):

Apparently the rhubarb had other ideas and has almost taken over the entire bed.  And that's after the rhubarb survived an attack of preschooler-driven construction vehicles!  Next year, all of the rhubarb will be out of the beds and planted by the fence.

Here is my entire plan:

I'm pretty stoked that I have most of the plants in.  It froze last week, so the tomatoes are protected, as are the peppers.  The squash and beans will go in on Memorial Day weekend.

Summer Quilts

It snowed here this morning.  Good thing I have this lovely quilt to snuggle under:

 

We think that it was made by my husband's grandmother.   Some might feel that the quilt should not be used, but it's in great shape and is probably better left unfolded on a bed than folded in a cedar chest.  It's underneath a purchased, new quilt, so it doesn't get dirty either.  


Check out the detail of the fussy cutting!

As biased as I am to the family quilt, the best display at the Palouse Patchers Quilt Show this year was the wall of color.  Apparently everyone received color swatches in a sealed envelope and had to make a 2"x3" quilt to match.  The pictures don't do it justice!

My son's favorite quilt was this orange and white one, which I have to admit was pretty awesome.  If I ever got up the notion to start quilting (not likely!) I would make something like this!  It was quilted by my friend Mary, using pieces cut by her friend that passed away recently.

The boy was also probably just about the only person at the show who noticed the secret:  Blue's Clues in the corner!