Ah, friends, so many things to tell you in order to relate a simple story. I should write at this blog more often. I’ll do my best to be succinct.

In March, I wrote a post at my fitness blog asking which whole wheat bread is best? I picked up one of every loaf from Safeway, compared ingredients and price, and then asked six people to taste test each loaf. I concluded that Milton’s Whole Grain Plus offered the best bang for the buck.

After some advice from readers, I tried a couple loaves from Trader Joe’s, and ultimately decided that I liked Rainier Organic Sasquatch Grain & Seed Bread. Eating a slice of that stuff is like eating a field of wheat.

But during that discussion, Brad suggested I should try making my own bread. “That’s crazy,” I thought. “Making your own bread is too much work.” But Brad pointed me to a Mark Bittman recipe for No-Knead Bread. Soon after, Kris and I discovered some refinements from Cook’s Illustrated. Over the past few months, she and I have been regularly baking an easy and cheap home-made bread that is far better than any store-bought stuff.

When I wrote about our breadmaking experience at Get Rich Slowly, several readers told us we could make the process even cheaper by purchasing our ingredients at Costco. On Friday, we headed over to pick up two pounds of yeast and fifty pounds of bread flour. (We also met Rhonda for lunch, where we talked about clothes and clubs, but that’s a story for later.)

While Kris was looking for breadmaking stuff, I nosed through the books. I found a title called Back to Basics: A Guide to Traditional Skills, which I fell in love with immediately. It’s an illustrated how-to manual for people interested in homesteading and self-sufficiency. It features lots of advice on growing your own food, both vegetable and animal.

This afternoon, Kris went across the street to chat with our neighbor, Patrice. I eventually went over to join the chat. Patrice was offering to let us pick more from her cherry tree, an enormous old thing that may never have been pruned. While we chatted, we started talking about the property she rents from John.

“This used to be a farm,” she told us. “In fact, John still calls it The Farm. The barn was actually a chicken coop. That’s where the vegetable garden used to be. And he had cows and horses. He was pretty self-sufficient.”

This is unsurprising. In addition to the old cherry tree, he has several large apples, rows of raspberries, and the best grapes in the neighborhood (which grow wild along the fence and up into the trees). When we moved in, John was the one who gave me wood and advice to set up our own grape and berry arbors. He’s happy to see us growing our own food.

This evening, Kris and I went back over to pick cherries. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit (which led me to understand finally what that phrase actually means), so we carried a ladder over. Kris climbed into the tree first, but she chickened out. “You’re a girl,” I said. “I’m a boy. Let me at it. This is boy’s work.”

I loved climbing trees when I was a boy, monkeying around from branch to branch. I did something similar this afternoon — in a 39-year-old man sort of way — snagging all the gorgeous cherries. (While I was in the tree, I thought I was doing a very Joel-like thing. “My new motto should be WWJD — what would Joel do?” I thought.

As we were finishing, the new neighbors came down to pick cherries, too. While Kris went inside to make some cherry preserves, I stayed outside to meet them. I let them use my ladder to climb into the tree to pick fruit of their own. We chatted a little to get to know each other.

“This is a strange neighborhood,” said one of the new neighbors. “It feels so old-fashioned. We’re so close to Portland, but it feels like we’re in the country. I mean, here we are all getting together to pick cherries.”

Exactly. That’s why we love it here. In a way, it feels like getting back to basics.

Last summer on our drive across England, we stopped at Jane Austen’s house. The inside was okay, but mostly I found it a little boring. A house is not a house when there’s nobody living there. It’s an empty shell of a thing — a museum.

But I found I loved the gardens.

In the U.K., what we call a yard is called a garden, and it comprises not just shrubs and flowers, but the lawn as well. In the case of Jane Austen’s house, the garden included a large carefully-maintained lawn, a variety of old trees, and lovely secluded spots. I was entranced by these lovely secluded spots.

“You know,” I said to Kris. “I think we could create a spot like that at Rosings Park.”

“Where?” she said.

“In the front border bed,” I said. She was skeptical.

When we returned in early August, I fought my way through the laurel and azalea to see if I could indeed create a lovely secluded spot. To my surprise, there was a relatively large opening in the midst of the front border bed. Or there could be. When I first looked at it, it was covered with English ivy, and crowded in by laurel, lilac, and holly. The ivy itself was covered with a couple decades of twigs and branches.

Last autumn, I made a half-hearted effort to clear the space. Mostly, I just pruned the big holly by the sidewalk. Then I let the idea lie dormant.

After gestating for nine months, the idea has finally, well…that’s a metaphor that’s been stretched too far. Let’s just say that over the weekend, Kris and I did a lot of yardwork. One of our top tasks was to weed the front border bed, and to do that, I had to climb back into my secluded spot. This time, the possibilities were much clearer.

This afternoon I grabbed a rake and a hoe and my pruners. I spent an hour raking twigs, pulling up ivy, and clearing debris. When I’d finished, my secluded spot had begun to take shape.

The space is roughly circular, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. It is completely enclosed by shrubs and trees. Dappled sunlight filters through the leaves overhead, and all around is a wall of trunks and limbs. At two locations one can see clearly outside The Grove (as I have come to call it):

• We pulled down a laurel limb, granting a view of the house.
• Because I pruned the holly tree last fall, there’s a screened view of the street. (It seemed like a good idea at the time, but how I now regret having pruned those branches!)

I’ve been sitting in The Grove for the past half an hour. It’s wonderful. People pass by on the street, and they do not notice I’m here. Though it’s a warm day, it’s cool beneath the trees. It’s peaceful. The only drawback so far are the goddamn mosquitoes.

Now I have to decide what I want to do with this lovely secluded spot. My first idea was to put down a layer of pea gravel and then install some wrought iron furniture. That seems like the proper English thing to do. But after further thought, I wonder if there might not be other possibilities.

Should I install a fire pit? Should I find some sort of soft surface? (I can imagine how awesome it would be to do daily yoga in The Grove.) Should we opt for a picnic table? Is it best to level the space? (There’s a slight slope.) How can I screen the road from view?

There are many possibilities. I’m not sure where to even begin looking. All I know is that this idea, which seemed a little crazy at first, will come to fruition, and soon. Of all my pipe dreams — Mini Cooper, Stickley furniture — this is the one that will be most satisfying to achieve, and the cheapest to do.

I can’t wait to have a lovely secluded spot to call my own.

Bonus! As I was editing this post, Sammy (or friendly blue jay) fluttered into The Grove and came hopping up beside me. I could have reached out and touched him! He was apparently after a peanut I had unearthed while clearing the space.

Ah, the Fourth of July. Such a pleasant time in our neighborhood: lots of loud explosions. The early evening is filled with pops and cracks. It sounds like small arms fire, like we’re in some sort of war zone. Of course this is especially pronounced on the Independence Day itself (when the snap, crackle, pop lasts well into the early morning), but it’s also noisy in the days leading up to the event.

Last night was especially bad. It wasn’t just the sound of “gunfire” at 10pm. No, last night we had the boom of “cannons” at three in the morning.

Okay, to be fair, that cacophony wasn’t actually from neighbors with firecrackers. It was from thunder.

The Portland area doesn’t have frequent thunderstorms, but we do get them from time-to-time. All my life, I’ve liked the sound of thunder rolling in the distance. It never occurred to me to think about what it must sound like to have the thunder overhead. Last night, I got to experience it first-hand.

Between 2:30 and 3:30, the thunder and lighting raged all around Rosings Park. It was as if we were in the midst of the Battle of Trafalgar. The lighting sometimes seemed to be a strobe light. And the thunder rolled thick and heavy.

“Crap,” I said when the rain began to fall. “I left the windows down in my car.”

The lightning flashed.

“Well, you’re not going to roll them up now,” Kris said. “But why don’t you go see if you can let Nemo in.” Nemo had been the only cat who refused to come in before bed.

I went downstairs to call for him. All of the other cats were tense. Every time the thunder cracked, Toto froze in fear. Max, his ears back, followed me around, begging to be let outside. But Nemo was nowhere to be found. He wouldn’t come when I called.

If I had been thinking, I would have grabbed my digital camera to record the scene. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience another thunderstorm like that again. But it was 3am and I wasn’t thinking straight.

Now the firecrackers over the next couple nights won’t seem like that a very big deal…

Earlier in the month I wrote about Sammy, our blue jay of happiness. Sammy is the semi-tame jay who loves Kris. (Well, he loves her peanuts, anyhow.)

Last weekend, I set out my camera and filmed ten minutes while Toto and I sat at the picnic table, eating fresh strawberries and feeding the jays. I’ve trimmed that down to the following three minutes, which Kris and I think are fun.

Be warned, however, that when Andrew watched this he was unimpressed. “This is boring,” he said. I’m sure most of you will find it so. But I like the way this captures late spring/early summer at Rosings Park — the lazy pace, the birds, the cats.

You’d think that if I were home all the time, I’d be able to keep the grass mowed. Heck, I’d certainly think that. Well, it just hasn’t been the case.

It’s been a constant battle this spring to keep the lawn at its proper length. I don’t mind mowing — in fact, I find it therapeutic. (Some of my best blog posts have come to me while mowing the lawn.) But in order to get the job done:

• The grass must be dry.
• I must be home.

Again, I’m not away from home very often lately, but I have missed some key windows of opportunities due to other commitments (running, biking, hanging out with friends). Most of all, the weather hasn’t co-operated.

At the moment, the grass is taller than I’ve ever let it get before. Ever. Well, parts of it, anyhow.

I’ve been trying to mow when the weather looks right, but I never get a long enough spell to finish. The sun was out all Saturday (well, it was dry anyhow), but I spent six hours in the morning trimming the arborvitae hedge. I started mowing the lawn in the mid-afternoon, but then had to stop midway through in order to leave for dinner with Marcela and Pierre.

I was going to finish on Sunday, but the weather didn’t cooperate. On Tuesday, I thought I had another shot at the yard, but the grass was too wet. The mower couldn’t handle it. I only managed to trim a small patch. I considered mowing late yesterday evening, but the grass was still too wet (it had rained earlier in the day).

Finally this morning I deemed the grass dry enough to mow. I went outside and began to plow through the green waves. The mower jammed, but not too often. I was making good progress, except that I was frequently interrupted by the guys who were here to suck the insulation out of the attic. Then, after they left a few minutes ago, I went outside to finish the job only to find it had begun to rain again.

Argh!

I am so frustrated. My lawn is now four different heights: short, not-so-short, tall, and savannah. And the forecast doesn’t look good. It contains rain, rain, and more rain. There’s a chance we’ll get a dry spell on Sunday or Monday, I think, but by then I’ll need to re-mow the entire yard.

I’m too the point where I’ve actually contemplated calling a yard service to see how much they’d charge to mow our half acre. I can’t bring myself to do it, though. Maybe I should call my brother Jeff and see if he needs to make some extra cash — he loves to mow!

Our yard is filled with birds. Since we moved in to Rosings Park, we’ve developed a passion for spotting and identifying birds. Kris is much more devoted to the hobby than I am, but I like it too. I like being able to recognize the call of the flicker, or to know that it’s the bushtits clustered on the suet feeder.

But for the most part, the birds don’t interact with us.

Sometimes a hummingbird will zip in for a closer look, but that’s only because she knows that we move like molasses. Last night there was a pigeon outside the kitchen who seemed very curious about us as we were preparing dinner. Usually if we’re working at the kitchen counter, the pigeons will fly away. This bird did not. And, of course, every summer the juvenile jays demonstrate a complete lack of fear toward humans.

Some people consider blue jays a nuisance bird, but I kind of like them. They’re cute. They’re also relatively smart. It’s fun to watch them interact with the squirrels and the other birds. Kris loves to give them peanuts to bury.

This spring, she’s actually befriended a jay (or pair of jays — we’re not sure). She calls him Sammy.

If Kris is outside, Sammy will fly in close to be near her. He watches her at work. She’ll be working in the roses, and Sammy will alight on a nearby branch. If she’s at the picnic table, he might sit on the gas grill. Or even on the opposite corner of the table. Kris and Sammy are buddies.

It’s quite possible that they’re only buddies because she carries peanuts, however. Blue jays like peanuts.

And cats like birds. Meatball, in particular, thinks that the new friendship between Kris and Sammy is exciting. It’s especially exciting to sit nearby when Kris throws a peanut into the lawn for Sammy to fetch. Meatball is convinced that what’s really happening is that Kris is trying to provide him a tasty snack.

The crazy thing is: Sammy doesn’t seem to mind cats. He’s a little wary, sure, and he doesn’t like to be charged by them, but mainly he’s just a gregarious little jay. While I was trimming hedges the other day, Sammy sat in the lowest branch of our mugo pine. He didn’t flinch at all as Simon spied him and crept closer. In fact, Sammy flew down to the grass, only six or eight feet from Simon, and hopped around doing bird stuff. Perhaps Simon was stunned by the bird’s brazen behavior. Or maybe he found Sammy’s actions worthy of respect. Whatever the case, he relaxed, and did not make a provocative move. So there we were: human, cat, and bird, hanging out like it was the most natural thing in the world.

On a final note, Sammy doesn’t actually eat all the peanuts Kris feeds him. Mostly, he hides them, but not very well. Recently, in a fit of desperation, he hid one in a rhododendron blossom:

I don’t know what will happen with Sammy. It’s very difficult to tell one jay from another. But I hope that he’ll stick around for at least a few more months. He brings a little character to the yard.

Note: I hope to eventually capture some video of Sammy in action. No promises.

It’s one of those days I love. It’s about 15 degrees centigrade (which is 59 for those of you in Oregon City), the skies are grey, and there’s a light rain falling. A perfect Oregon day: warm and wet.

Over the past month or so, Kris has developed a system to ensure I don’t spend my entire day on the computer. She pulled a dry-erase board out of storage, and every day before she leaves, she writes down a chore (or two) that I need to complete.

To many of you (all female), this probably sounds like a terrible system. I should just do what needs to be done, right? In theory, yes. In reality, I’m easily distracted. I like having the dry erase board because it lets me know which of those tasks in my chore cloud Kris deems most important.

Today my primary task was to weed the grapes.

When we planted the raspberries and grapes, their 20-foot beds were empty of weeds. In fact, we even planted some strawberries alongside the raspberry canes. Now, however, the grass has crowded its way in and is dominating the base of that row. It’s threatening to do the same by the grapes, too, but it’s being held at bay by a variety of noxious weeds. Including raspberries. (Those raspberries are invasive!)

This afternoon I went outside in shorts, a t-shirt, and a cap. No shoes. No socks. I spent half an hour enjoying the misty air, pulling grass, hoeing weeds. It was a soggy mess, of course, but I loved it. As I say, it’s one of those days I love.

Every day, it’s the same thing.

The alarm goes off at 5:30. Kris hits snooze.

The alarm goes off at 5:39. Kris pulls herself awake and heads downstairs for a shower. I pull of my C-PAP mask, roll over, grab my laptop, and then set it on my belly. While Kris is getting ready, I’m doing my morning stats.

Each day, I log the same numbers from Get Rich Slowly. I have a spreadsheet containing traffic, subscriber, link, and revenue information. It’s a little anal-retentive perhaps, but it’s probably no surprise to most of you. I also process e-mail and then check to be sure there are no fires to be put out. (Believe it or not, sometimes there are.)

At about 6:05, I put away the laptop, grab some clothes, and tromp downstairs. I brush my teeth, etc. as Kris gets out of the shower. At 6:10, I get into the tub and begin to soak. I don’t have as long as I’d like (and in the winter, I never get as warm as I want) — I need to be out of the house at 6:25, which means I need to be out of the tube at 6:20.

Some days — like today — Kris throws a monkey wrench into things. Some days — like today — she begins to talk to me about work. At 6:18.

Kris is a good storyteller, and I like to hear about all her little friends, but her stories are not short. In fact, they’re always quite long. I’d rather she told them to me in the evening, as we’re eating dinner. “I’m tired when I come home,” she said tonight when I mentioned this.

I understand. But when she starts telling me stories about work at 6:18 am, my heart sinks. I want to be a good husband and listen, but I also don’t want to be late for work. If I’m on time every day during a pay period, I get a $50 bonus. If I’m not, I don’t. And when Kris begins to tell a story at 6:18, I know it’s going to be a near thing.

Things get even worse when she slips into lethargy mode. She’ll go through periods where she hits the snooze button twice. Or when she won’t get into the shower until 6:04. When I come down to take my turn, she’ll have only just begun.

When this sort of thing begins to happen on a regular basis, I practice social engineering. Before she gets home from work, I go through the house and set back every clock by three minutes. (I can’t set them back any further or it’s too obvious. Though not as obvious as writing a blog entry about it.) This usually helps mitigate the problem, though it never quite solves it.

Ah, the strange dynamics of the husband-wife relationship.

I was pleased this afternoon to come home and remember that I was supposed to do prep work for dinner. I took out the chicken breasts, cleaned them, and cut them into chunks. Kris had asked me to put the chicken pieces into a bowl, and so I did.

I was nearly finished with my task when I was distracted by the zhoop of a chat window opening in the other room. It was my “imaginary colleague” Leo from Zen Habits. We chatted for a few minutes, discussing possible guest posts.

When we’d finished, I came back to the kitchen to finish my work. What did I find? My three hairy sons on the counter, clustered around the bowl of chicken. “A feast!” they sang. “Dad left us a feast!” They saw me come in. “Thanks, Dad! We always did like you better than Mom.”

Their praise was short-lived. I clapped my hands and shouted, sending the two younger boys in various directions. Simon, however, took this as an invitation to choose the choicest piece.

When I tried to take his prize from him (after snapping this photo, of course), Simon growled his low, nasty growl. “I hate you, Dad,” he said. “I always did like Mom better.”

I guess our chicken dinner will have tooth marks. We’ll give those pieces to Tiffany.

Meanwhile, as I’ve sat here in the kitchen typing this story, all three boys have returned to the counter, eagerly searching for the delicious treasure that was there only moments before. (They glare at me from time-to-time — they know I’m responsible for spoiling their fun.)

Anyone want to come over for dinner tonight?

Several weeks ago, I drove to Brownsville to purchase a chipper from my cousin Mart. It was a long drive. I left early from work, taking the van through the scenic Willamette Valley highways. I was intentionally trying to avoid the freeway.

After nearly two hours of driving, I reached Mart’s house. I chatted with him and Elizabeth for a bit, and then we loaded the chipper into the van. I wanted to set it on its side, but when I did, it leaked gasoline. We managed to tied it to one of the van’s inside walls.

At this point I might have returned to the freeway. Instead, I decided to take the same scenic highways home. Things went well at first, but then I reached Lebanon and got lost. I went around and around in circles for twenty minutes (seriously), before saying “to hell with it” and striking north on the first road I could find. Much to my dismay, this road wound through country, eventually leading southwest, almost to the point where I had started. Meanwhile the stench from the leaked gasoline was making me woozy. I was not happy.

I tried a couple of other routes across the valley, navigating by dead reckoning, but after an hour and only a few miles of northward progress, I gave up. I found the freeway and zoomed home.

When I went to start the chipper a few weeks later, I was concerned. The pull cord was jammed. It didn’t take long, however, to discover that a single thickish twig was lodged between the blades. Simple to fix, yes? No. Chippers are dangerous. Because of this, they’re designed so that it’s almost impossible for a person to reach the blades. Even when I laid the chipper on the ground (letting it leak gasoline), I couldn’t reach the jam. Eventually I had to find a long stick, which I used to whack on the twig in question until it came loose.

In the 3-1/2 years since we moved to Rosings Park, we’ve become accustomed to dealing with yard debris. We ship most of it off in the yard waste container, but the big stuff just won’t fit. To make matters worse, we’d really need two or three containers to transport the waste we generate. As a result, we’ve accumulated a huge pile of branches and twigs (and, in some cases, entire trees) underneath the redwood.

Two weekends ago, Kris and I began our quest to eliminate this pile.

For three hours, Kris cut branches into smaller pieces. She made stacks next to the chipper, and I fed the wood into the hoppers. The chipper did it’s thing, grinding things to mulch, and spitting it into a bag. We produced about six wheelbarrows full of mulch, which we spread around the base of our blueberries. Eventually, however, the dust and fumes became too much — I developed a splitting headache and began to sneeze uncontrollably. I called it a day.

This weekend, we decided to try to finish the job. Though it was cold, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was nice weather for yardwork. Again, Kris made stacks for me, and I fed the wood into the chipper. We managed to work our way through most of the pile, until all that was left was nasty little twiggy twisty branches that don’t fit well into the chipper. I’m not sure how we’re going to get rid of these. I’d like to burn them, but Kris is convinced that we can’t. I’m not so sure. (Anyone know what the law is for unincorporated Clackamas County?)

Next we decided to tackle the oak leaves. The chipper makes short work of leaves. The problem comes, however, when you also feed acorns and twigs in with the leaves. The leaf hopper isn’t designed to take twigs, and even small pieces can cause big problems. We were nearly finished when the chipper jammed to a halt.

Ugh.

Suddenly I was transported to that strange, unfamiliar world: the world in which I’m required to be Mr. Handyman. I spent an hour banging on the chipper, opening various access points, searching for a jam. Eventually I found it. Two twigs had independently become stuck between blades. I had to use a screwdriver and rubber mallet to free things, but eventually I did get the machine working.

I’d had enough, though.

It’s nice to have a chipper — it makes short work of a lousy chore — but the beast has been a burden. I put it away for the winter. Maybe we’ll finish chipping next spring.