I Remember Now. . . I Like to Read!

~Highlight of the Day: spending more time reading than anything else ~

When I was in the later years of my elementary education, summer meant trips to the library to exchange the last ten horse/fantasy books with the next ten. I would read and read and read, and sometimes pause to fantasize about having my own little reading nook, but then go back to reading. I haven't done that in years, and definately won't be doing it any time soon. . . but I did spend the better part of today just reading.

I'm almost done with the Atlas of Love. I had to leave it downstairs because I knew if I brought it up to my room I just wouldn't sleep tonight. Not that I'll sleep well anyway. It's much too hot and humid. Yesterday I stepped out of the air conditioned car and my glasses fogged up. 

Aside from wading through air and submitting myself to fictional drama, I also played a fair amount of ukulele, made an awful pot of what was intended to be mac'n cheese, and made two beautiful pies.

One is Minny's Chocolate pie from the best movie ever, the Help. The other is an apple pie for our turkey dinner tomorrow (because having a thanksgiving meal on the first day of July is totally normal and sane :) I haven't had a chance to taste either one yet. . . I'm super curious about the chocolate pie.

Oh yes, and I also mopped the floor, which was in such desparate need of it I could almost hear the pleas, "Help me! I can't breathe through this grime, I can't see anything! I don't remember what color I even am!"

It was a pretty productive Saturday. And tomorrow's going to be wonderful because I have two pies and only 50 more pages waiting for me :)

It's Friday, Friday, got to get down. . .

~Highlight of the Day: recieving TWO letters from some of my favorite people in the whole world~

Mail is perhaps one of the best things in this world. It's always exciting and sometimes unexpected, and, when not unexpected, much anticipated. Whenever I recieve a letter I feel immediately transported into some Jane Austen novel, or more recently Downton Abby.  I'm not sure how Jodi sent her letter without a stamp though. . . still figuring that one out.

I also started reading a book. For fun. Imagine that! I am pretty sure it's been over a year now since I've done that. I think the last book I read was Wicked ( which I don't really recommend, actually) at the beginning of last summer. Right now it's The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel.

A lady I work with recommended it to me and is letting me borrow it - it takes place in Seattle and is about three women and a baby. One of the women is LDS, so naturally I'm curious. How does the world really view us/portray us in literature? So far it's an excellent read.

And to top it all off. . . I finally watched Brave! It was so good. And my daughters (when I have daughters) will definately grow up watching it.

Fieldtrip!

~Hightlight of the Day: sending a picture of a weeping angle to my sister~

So what do a whole bunch of plant geeks do for fun? We go to the Morris Arboretum.

the Fernery

This is easily the biggest Katsura tree

 I've ever seen. Did you know at one point
 durring the year they smell like cotton candy?
So cool.

 They had a lot of cool places, like a giant bird's nest. While walking out I passed a mother and her little boy. The boy was saying excitedly, "those are big eggs. Those are dinosaur eggs!" It made me smile :)

Aaaaaand Mercury. The god, not the stuff.

After we had a chance to mosey around a bit we were off to the Laurel Hill Cemetary. I wasn't all too excited about it at first, but then we arrived :) It was a truly amazing cemetary - one of the oldest (if not the oldest) of it's kind. As a more knowledgable intern told me, it was the first to be designed as a place to go and spend time.

weeping angel!

There's just so much stone, everywere, and a lot them are obelisks or other tall structures. Altogether it creates this forest of stone amongst all the greenery, which is quite lovely.

There are also several streets/paved paths just lined with small houses (I'm sure there's a more technical term. . . ) so much so that it looks almost like a neighborhood. Of dead people, of course.

So that's what we do for fun! It was indeed a blast. And just for the record, I wore my chacos all day long, and I can just make out the beginings of a chaco tanline :)

Bees Make Honey. . .

~ Highlight of the Day: eating honey freshly extracted from one of the Row hives ~

I learned so much about bees and bee keeping today it's crazy. Did you know the attack pheremone smells like bananas? So don't eat a banana before working on a  hive. . . Or that honey harvested later in the season is darker? Or that eating local honey may help your body fight against allergies? Today we were extracting honey. It involves a fume board, special knives and combs, a centerfuge and a series of filters, and a bit of time. . . and it is so worth it!

So this is called a 'super'. The hive is made up of a series of these stacked one on top of the other. You can get them in different sizes, depending on how much honey you're able to lift at a time. I think this is a medium super. . . but I'm not sure.

We also learned how to light the . . . the name excapes me, but it's for smoking the bees. Pine needles are the best because they don't burn very hot, so you won't burn your bees, just lull them over :)

You can tell if the honey is ready to be extracted because it will have been capped over. The bees cap it over once the moisture has been reduced to the point where it won't go bad. Aparantly the only thing that can make honey go bad is moisture.

Then we put the racks into this big grey metal thing and spin it to make all of the honey fly to the sides and drain down to the bottom. From there it is put through a series of filters to catch the wax and anything else that managed to get in.

The honey they extract from the Row gets bottled and sent to the giftshop to sell.

So now I'm going to have bee hives next to my big ol' chicken coop :)

By the way, I discovered today that Haj a Amin Husseini's favorite animal was a chicken. I'm not sure how I feel about that. . .

A Day Off!

A day off! How exciting! Here's what I did with it:

7:15am - check phone, realize everyone else had been working for 15 minutes, also realize it's cold enough to use my sheet and blanket for the first time in weeks

7:16am - roll over and go back to sleep a very content intern

8:46am - check phone, figure almost 9 hours of sleep was good, start mentally preparing to get out of bed

9:15am (ish) - finish morning routine, get on computer, check email and fb and the price of silver (it's still dropping)

9:40am - realize I'm starving

9:43am - eat granola while reading O Jerusalem. Such a good book.

10:15am - play ukulele


10:20am - start the 6th episode of Downton Abby.


11: 08am - finish the 6th episode, resist starting the 7th (and last!)


11:09am - decide Anna is my favorite. She doesn't make frustrating mistakes, she's just kind.

11:10am - walk out to the garden and begin weeding

12:40pm - try to start the riding mower (it's our house's week to take care of it)

12:42pm - fail to start the mower

12:44pm - begin weeding again

1:35pm - start 7th episode

2:38pm - finish 7th episode, check when 2nd season is available. . . not till July 7th.

2:42pm - begin weeding. again.

3:40pm - meet everybody comming home from work, ask them how to start mower.

3:45pm - take part in trying-to-start-the-mower party.

3:50pm - finally find someone who knows how to start it. begin mowing

6:09pm - finish mowing (it's a cool riding mower, and I was pretty good at it after the first hour :)


6:11pm - begin to remulch garden paths

7:23pm - begin watering with fish meal water (it smells like wet dog when you dilute it)

8:05pm - finish watering and rolling up the hose (it's like wrestling with a nasty sea creature. . . )

8:10pm - discover milk has become yogurt!?! it was perfectly fine this morning, and doesn't even smell sour. . . the big question is, is it safe to eat? I'll keep you all posted. . .

8:15pm - hang out on porch and play ukulele

9:20pm - head inside with intentions of being in bed at 10pm

9:46pm - get off of facebook

9:47pm - start blog post

Peach Knedliky! . . . sort of

So I have some Czechoslovakian heritage on my dad's mom's side, and because of this my family is familiar with, and rather fond of, a few Czech dishes. Our favorite by far is Peach Knedliky, or in other words, peach dumplings topped with sugar, browned butter, and cottage cheese! It's like having dessert for dinner, and it's the only meal we use our steak knives for, so naturally as young children my siblings and I learned to look forward to when peaches were in season.

Usually when trying out family recipes on my own I'm met with success, or something close enough to it to still taste right, but today was a different story. . .


I couldn't find the recipe in my book. . . which is odd, because I know I had to call Mom last time I made this, in Provo, and I should have written it down. But aparantly I didn't, so I asked her yesterday while we were on the phone. She listed off the ingredients from memory, and some approximate measurements. It was simple enough, so I repeated the ingredients, committed them to memory, and we went on with our conversation.


Today I get home from work, check my email, and decide I'm going to be culinarily ambitious. So I get out my flour and the shortening that's probably been in the cupboard above the stove since the DuPont's established Longwood, and started throwing things together. I thought I was doing pretty good, except I couldn't remember if she'd listed sugar or not. I figured sugar never hurts, tossed some in and started mixing. I came up with a beautiful, sweet dough that tasted an awful lot like pie dough. I don't think the recipe calls for sugar. . .

Not to be discouraged, I told myself "so it'll be sweeter than usual, how bad can that be?", and rolled it out anyway.

I then wrapped up my peach, pinched the seams, smoothed them out, and put it in a pot of boiling water. I had to call again and ask how long to boil it. . . who knew recipes were so important! :)

After about 46 minutes (it's supposed to be 50) of boiling, and boiling, and boiling, I finally gave up on waiting and called it good. Alas. The dough I made was more akin to pie dough than any Czech dumpling dough, and pie dough doesn't boil very well. I ended up with a lovely mash of peach and soggy crust.

It was ok. I'd say a little too rich for me, what with extra sugar and a buttery, flaky crust thing going on. But with enough cottage cheese I managed to finish it off :)

So there you have it. One failed attempt at Peach Knedliky. I will have to try again. Having the actual recipe may help . . .

Update on Green Things

Here's a quick update on the garden, since I haven't posted pictures of it for an entire week and a half:

I've been weeding. And weeding. And weeding. By the time I've weeded the whole thing, there are already more weeds where I started! But today I got pretty close to having it all done at once. But after Tuesday it will be perfect.

Everything has grown leaps and bounds, except for the watermelons for some reason. I'm most excited for the tomatoes. I've got plenty of green ones, but no ripe ones. I can't wait till I can walk out to the garden and just eat one off the vine!

I also have several of this interesting plant:

The colors are lovely, but I'm not sure what it is. . . I know you eat it. somehow. I'm not sure what part though. . . right now they're being chomped on by some cute little green catapilars. They're so cute, I can barely stand getting rid of them. I wish I had chickens here. . .

Coral, Orange, and Yellow

I am afraid that when I grow up and have a house and a whole yard to mess with, I'm only going to plant one color scheme. . . the coral/orange/yellow one:

 I mean, I'm already showing all the tell tale signs of a serious condition. . .

1. Instant desire to purchase anything matching color scheme
(Target has a set that could completely outfit a whole kitchen in this awesome coral and orange. . . I had to tell myself "no Rachel, that would be way to difficult to fly home with. . . " )

2. Tendencies to inundate pinterest with floods of said color scheme, especially when working on the Wedding Ideas or Crafts boards. (sorry!)

3. Need to point it out publicly when the perfect shade of a particular color in the scheme is discovered in a nearby object. ( me, to roommate: "look at that girl's socks! They are the perfect shade of coral!"

4. Growing distaste at the thought of introducing other colors into places such as the garden, kitchen, or stationary. (Um, no. I don't want that free plant. It's purple. . . )

So I guess admitting the problem is the first step to recovery, right? For now is it considered preventative measures, or am I at the stage where I need recovery  ? :)

So perfect. . .

Swimmin' with the fishes

It was so hot today I couldn't resist a dip in the Lily Pools. . .

I did get a little more than I bargained for though, since my waders leaked. A lot. When I took them off it was like I didn't even use waders. . . the boots were actually filled with water and I had to pour them out. But it was worth it, because I got to see/smell/touch all of this:

Cool things about water gardens:

• They add black dye to the water. It hides mechanics, and lessens the algae.
• To keep down the mosquitoes they apply some sort of bacterial control at the start of the season, and then they have cute little fish that eat what's left for the rest of it.
• There are two main types of water lilies: tropical and hardy. Hardy water lilies only bloom from 9am-5pm. So if you work regular hours and want to see them, don't bother planting these at home :) 
• The huge spiky lily pads are Victoria cruziana and Victoria Longwood Hybrid. They get to be big enough by the fall that they can hold the weight of a person. They flower at night for two nights: the flower opens white on the first night, and purple/pink on the second night. The flower also emits heat when it first opens to better spread its fragrance.

Getting totally soaked was totally worth it. We also got to go on the roof, so we could see the pools from above.

 

 Well I am sold. I must have a water garden some day.

I'm meeelting, meeeeelting!

I've had a pretty good life, weather-wise, these past two years. I enjoy the mild, maybe-a-bit-rainy-at-first summers of western Washington, and then I move to Utah in time for their beautifully warm, sunny fall and sunny/snowy winter. I don't have to deal with the 3 months of winter rain in Washington, or the hot summers in Utah.

So for the first time in, oh, eight years I'll be experiencing heat this summer, and I got my first real taste of it today. Here's the thing. I work in greenhouses. Old ones that are as much a part of the history of Longwood as they are a place to grow stuff. There isn't a lot of air movement in them. Greenhouses are designed to hold in heat, which is wonderful in the winter. It's just horrible in the summer. One of the greenhouses got up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit today.



By the way, here are my standards in training!
 The twins are Hamelias and the tall one (below) is a yellow Chrisanthemum.
I'm not sure how I'm bringing them on the plane home. . . :)



I'm growing them in a greenhouse we call 'the Church' (for it's shape)
It's where we grow most of the standards, which
I think is very fitting :)

And who knows what the adjusted temperature is after factoring in the humidity. That's probably what scares me the most about this summer. Humidity. It changes everything. It can take a happy little temperature and either plunge it into the frigid depths of nasty cold, or work it up to a boiling rage. But I am going to do it. I will survive this summer humidity, just like I'm going to survive four more months of Jerusalem heat :)

Bring it on Pennsylvania summer.

Three New Things

#1. Chaco Sandals!

Here comes the Chaco tan lines. . . I can't wait!

Look! They're already making friends with all the other shoes!
This is the most popular shoe hangout in the room -
right next to the computer desk :)

#2. A Journal!

I was rather dismayed when I realized I'd forgotten to pack an

empty journal from Washington, but this one will work perfectly!

It reminds me of the Leonardo Dicaprio version
of Romeo and Juliet. . . over the top gaudy with
some gangster vibes. but I like it.

#3. The Lumineers Album!

It's rare for me to get an entire album. . .
but I liked all of their songs. . . so I did :)

Ho Hey is my favorite, but Stubborn Love is
a close second.