Tuesday, September 2, 2008

green thumbs, brown toes

This weekend was a lot of fun, but hard work! P's dad and stepmom came down so I spent all evening Friday at the grocery and then all morning Saturday cooking so there would be tasty treats in the house for them to eat. We went to the farmer's market Saturday morning and picked our own fresh tomatoes. We got some sweet corn and fresh peaches as well. The peaches are amazing. They actually taste like a peach is supposed to! Far better than the Giant Eagle mushy things that try to pass for a peach. I made P's parents tailgate food for the game on Saturday (the usual, salsa, chips, cheese and crackers) and then a nice quiche and some blueberry muffins for breakfast on Sunday. I think they were all a hit. I think the cheese and crackers went over particularly well because I had some Brie and some of my favorite Stripey Jack. Expensive cheese...but OH so GOOD!

Sunday morning P's dad and step mom helped us plan out our flower beds so that they look like actual landscaping and not just what the builder just randomly threw together when the house was built. We cut out the flowerbed by hand and now just have to till it, add the various different top soils and peat mosses, and then plant. I think I'm going to put in a dogwood tree and an assortment of knock out roses and boxwood plants. They are my favorites out of the 'easy to grow, hard to kill' varieties.

I do not really have a green thumb and I am a messy messy gardener. Gardening is a contact sport in my opinion. You should be at one with the dirt, get your toes dirty and come out with some scrapes and bruises. It's far more fun that way. I mean, people pay hundreds of dollars to get mud baths and sea salt wraps...I can get the mud and sweat for free in my own back yard!

Monday we went to the parents new house and swam in the pool for an hour. Mom cooked tilapia sandwiches with pasta salad and sent me home with left overs. MMMM... Mom and dad are apparently miffed with P because he shot his mouth off about helping them move and they over heard (like I told him they would) but I expect it will blow over if he apologizes.

Ahhh the joys of marriage and pleasing the respective in-laws. Loverly.

It's a quiet day in the office. All but two of us are out on vacation. It's odd to not hear any chatter as I sit here.

I was reading Woflylover's post about changing her name and it made me think about why I chose to change mine... For one, I'm not real into the whole feminist school of thought either...there's nothing wrong with it...it's just not me. I also feel like...though I loved my old name, and I loved who I was (am) as that name...Taking the new name was symbolic of starting our new life together. It became our shared name.... not just taking his name. In my heart I'll always be an Anderson because that's who my history is. But, I wanted to make that leap to being in a new stage in my life. When you get married...YOUR life, becomes OUR life. Or at least it's supposed to I think. When you're united in name, it makes it easier to put that theory into practice. I may one day try to give a child the middle name Anderson....who knows. I might also just get the Anderson crest tatooed on my foot sometime :-) There's also that family tree bit...I really enjoy looking back at my family tree and seeing how the Roscommons became Bloomfields and the Bloomfields became Andersons. It's a lineage that I enjoy thinking about and thinking hmmm...I'm adding to that and contributing to that story. It's kind of a familial evolution, if that makes any sense at all? I don't mean that we're evolving into a better era by taking someoene else's last name, but it shows change...hopefully positive change, as each person in our history grows our family to expand to include other families and other people. We bring in new talents and new unique special features and traditions as we add a new name to the branches of our tree.

I dont know...babblings I guess. I'll stop :-)

3 things:

1: it was really nice to see my uncle and see him and my dad together, those times are few and far between because of the whole atlantic ocean thing
2: i'm excited to see our house growing and becoming more of a 'home' that has our personal touches all over it
3: my quiche turned out great :-) way to go cooks.com!

2 comments:

Blue said...

that's so cool that you had landscaping help! i can only fantasize about such things. $ to purchase the supplies, and muscle-power to put it all into place. i'm a one-woman show, so it's in a long-line up of things i should be doing.

it got cool over the weekend and sure enough, my basil plant is yellowing. maybe the heat coming for the next 2 weeks will resurrect it (hope hope)!

i've always fantasized of having relatives in other countries. if i had an uncle in england i'd be hopping over all the time for visits. i ♥ europe!

i also ♥ your attitude about family, joining forces, becoming one, and lineage. it's refreshing in a world that seems increasingly disconnected from it's past, and just how it is that we've gotten where we are today as societies. we, without them, wouldn't be. it's nice to honor them by how we live, and by remembering them. not that they were always good, and i think many people are far better and more refined as individuals than their forebears. but in other ways, as a whole we've lost some of that goodness that is the hallmark of the brightest and noblest in humanity. look at me waxing philosophical!

you're right...i don't need to pine away for mud treatments in spas...i can head outside and sweat in the dirt. for free! :-)

Heather said...

i appreciate what you said about the last nameness (did i make up a new word?). that is the big thing for me...and i think where i really get stuck. it is the beginning of OUR life and represents our SHARED life. i feel like not taking his last name means in some way, i am not committing fully. and despite what he says, i think he would like me to take his name...and the one time he said something not so positive about me keeping my own name was to say it was about OUR journey. i'll probably change it. i'll just be sad to see my name go. :)

good luck with all the gardening. i know what it's like!

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