Fun at the Birdbath

I recently constructed a birdbath on my deck. I like to watch the birds at the feeder I have hung up and want to provide them water in addition to food. It has been so much fun to watch them in the bath. Some just perch and drink, others get full-on in the water and splash to their little bird-heart's content. The Stellar Jays are the most sprinkler-like, probably because they're such large birds that when they splash and play the water cascades everywhere. It's great! I've tried to take pictures but my camera isn't the best for nature shots and the birds tend to be skittish. So I can't take credit for any of the slideshow pictures, but wanted to show you my avian visitors!

According to the BBC, the average person will have only read 6 of the 100 books listed here. Which of course made me want to figure out how many I have read. I've entered those in purple- my total is 54. How many have YOU read?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (really? all of them?!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog inthe Night-time -Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Bank
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Garden Update

My garden is really taking off. We had a very warm, sunny weekend which seems to have caused a growth spurt. All in all, I'd say not bad for a container garden!

Dahlias


Mighty Lemon Cucumber


Two of my seven tomato plants (can't really tell, but they're nearly as tall as me, one Sweet 100, the other Sun Gold - both cherry and both sweetly, magically delicious)


Gerbera Daisies


Cowhorn Peppers (will change color as they ripen)


Tomato Close-Up (these are Bush Early Girl)

Things I've learned in the month of June:

• If you stop to get the mail and leave your car idling at the mailbox bank with the door open, a random two-year-old WILL climb into your car.
• If I'm buying book - whether a gift for me or someone else - and the only copy available is the movie tie-in cover, I'll go buy it somewhere else.
• Reading a cupcake cookbook right before going to bed does not ensure sweet dreams... Though it should.
• I'd rather read or garden than just about anything else.
• Mistaking a teaspoon for a tablespoon in a recipe can lead to terrible, terrible results.
• The only time I want to exercise is mid-morning when I'm at work. Strangely enough, when I get done with work and could actually do it, it's the last thing I want.
• I am addicted to the library.
• Waking up to my dog licking my armpit is by far the strangest way I have EVER started a weekend.
• When the screen on your phone says Private Caller you should answer once in awhile. You never know who will be on the other end.
• The sound of chirping birds makes me supremely happy.

Portland Farmer's Market

Brett and I went to the Portland farmer's market this morning and invited his mom, Toni, to come along with us. There were a lot of people there despite the very overcast skies. Today, I bought fresh, handmade cheeses, purple potatoes, locally-made pesto sauces (cilantro-pistachio and chipotle), and a bouquet of peonies. The strawberries all looked delicious but I already have a flat in the fridge. We had a great time!

Saved By The Bell

If you were ever a Saved By The Bell fan, then this clip is for you. I use the term "fan" loosely because, after all, we were much younger when we watched this. There's no judgement here.

How does your garden grow?

I'm really excited about this year's garden. It's nowhere near as prolific as others in my family, but for me - a limited, container-based setup - it's not too shabby. I'm growing lots of tomatoes, several varieties of peppers, lemon cucumbers, cantaloupe, and many many herbs. Someday, when I have more space, I would love to sustain my entire produce needs. I'm also growing various plants and flowers for beauty: dahlias, violas, balloon flowers, heron's bill, sedum, gerbera daisies, columbines, honeysuckle, English daisies, nemesia and others. It's so much fun to grow and nurture something and see it reach its plant potential. Is that how parenting is?

Honeysuckle

Mountain Magic Basil

English Daisies

Rhododendron Garden, Portland Oregon

New Hair!

Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down

Okay, rain doesn't really get me down but we have had a LOT of it lately. Bonus points if you know the song reference.

Rainy Day Video #1



Rainy Day Video #2