Good Busy, Bad Busy

A while ago I wrote about how great the summer was simply because you could do a bunch of nothing, all snoozy style, in the sunshine. That was, like, a lifetime ago, and a whole different person writing that. Because I haven't had a spare sec in the past weeks to sit my keister down, much less fall asleep in a pool of sun and start drooling on myself.

But. Busy is good, right?

Skate camp at Commonwealth! Skating, sweating, and more skating, bookended by a series of minor catastrophes where we scramble around putting out fires until the veins in our foreheads are ready to blow. Small business life!

About a half hour of peace, working in the shade.

Long days and longer nights. Alex's birfday session at Commonwealth.

Straight up pooped.

5 Growing Things I Can't Do Without

  Even in their mid-60s, my parents still out-farm and out-garden me. And during my childhood, they set a ruthless precedent for what a garden should be. I grew up on five acres of Shangri La in the mountains of Colorado—where every summer my sister and I feasted on fresh corn and strawberries and played hide and go seek behind colossal lilac bushes and patches of rhubarb.

This really IS how you should live.

But. I live in the city. And I’m busy!

Plus, although I appreciate certain qualities of it, I’m not necessarily a back-to-the-land hippy like my parents were. I choose my small-but-good garden carefully—from veggies to flowers—for low-maintenance awesomeness. Below, you’ll find five growing things that I just can’t do without.

Lettuce: Store-bought lettuce is disappointing. Sometimes you just want two pieces for a friggin BLT, but you have to buy the whole head—which just rots behind the ketchup bottle on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Grow your own lettuce, though, and you can graze at will. Even if it’s just a couple heads, a little lettuce patch will chill out for months with nothing more than regular watering and weeding. It doesn’t like the extreme heat, so I do a spring crop and a fall crop. Easy peasy!

Cilantro: Fresh cilantro has a strange kind of power. It makes everything taste better. And it goes in so many different kinds of food—from Mexican to Thai to Italian to simple fresh salads and sandwiches. Plus, it’s über-easy. Toss some seeds in the dirt during spring-shower time and reap the reward a month or two later.

Dahlias: These exquisite flowers are true works of art. They come in a million different colors and variations, each one a tiny masterpiece of nature. Plus, the dahlia grows from a bulb, making it extremely low on the effort scale. In early spring, just dig a little hole in the ground, drop some bulbs in, and let em rip!

Jasmine: Plant this creeping vine in a giant pot right by a window or on a patio or anywhere you’ll be hanging out regularly. Those tiny white flowers might look unassuming, but the scent they discharge is nothing short of powerful. I have mine growing up the pillar on my front stoop, so that when I sit out there of an evening contemplating the neighborhood goings on, the deep, mysterious perfume wafts up gracefully and surrounds me in a cloud of scented ether.

Rosemary: Plant this one for the bees. It’s nice to do something for someone else, right? When they’ve had their fill, you can use it in your roast potatoes, on grilled corn, to make butters and herb-flavored salts, to rinse through your hair to make it all smooth and shiny (Aveda does it!), and finally, to rub all over your dogs and cats to keep the fleas away. You guys, rosemary is a miracle plant.

Fam-zine

My parents, my big sister, and my nephew came to town the weekend before last. And it was just my luck that for several days straight, water poured forth from the sky. Here's the deal. Portland is sooo awesome when the sun shines, but when it doesn't, especially at this time of year, you get kinda embarrassed in the face of visitors. Like, it's okay to lurk out in your sweatpants all day watching David Attenborough documentaries when you're by yourself, but as a method of entertaining? Nah.

So we wandered around dismally wet streets and ate. Ate a lot.

But I don't want to get down on the Northwest in general and Portland specifically, because even when it's foul out, you're confronted with so much beauty on a minute-to-minute basis that how can you complain? And yet ..... I do.

I dragged them all on a soggy hike in the gorge and cursed the skies as they marveled at yet another giant snail/slug thingy on the trail.

Hittin the rosé with my sis.

Annual trip to the rose garden. Love this place. A natural wonder.

My nephew just turned 8 and is a total BA (bad ass) and at the same time a total nerd. I love him for this.

The Weekend Report

Worked: Snnoooozeville.

Ate: I decree that cornbread should accompany every meal—that, or salty-ass paprika fries. (Photo: T Byrnes)

Panicked: Although I have a lot of experience filling sandbags, they are not, unfortunately, an item I keep on hand in the household. But maybe this should change? Global-warming freak downpours and all.

Rode: Sweet freedom. (Photo: T Byrnes)

Doing Nothing

The thing I like to do best in the summer is do nothing. When else can you get away with such bare minimums of activity and still feel okay about yourself? Honestly I'd be happy if all I did was sit quietly, alternately in the sun or in the shade—depending on temperature, and read John Steinbeck or something else good, and after a little while, maybe put the book down so I could watch the way the gnats are going crazy in a shaft of sun over the rosebush, or the bees in the rosemary, or the dog lick-nibbling his paw, or, or, or ....

It's fun to bookend those hushed hours with other stuff, though—like drinking iced coffee with cream through a pink straw, skating in the heat and then swimming the sweat off, sipping cool things on verandas under white garden lights, and so on. I'll probably try to fit some of that in, too.