Fall? What fall?

Summer's over.

Officially.

Crap. We didn't even get a fall this year. Straight from gross heat 10 days ago to snow. Fantastic.

It's also officially 2 months until I go back to work. I'm reconsidering my pledge to not go back for more than the required 2 weeks. My boss quit (today was her last day) and her departure is making me think really long and hard about leaving for good. I may just try to make a deal with my new editor to work part-time when I go back. The money's almost worth it, but there's still a lot of other things to take into consideration, too.

I've started doing a bit of designing every day this week. With my return to work coming up and Christmas and winter, not to mention Maddy's ever-increasing development and the start of her realizing her independence, I'm finding myself wondering what I'm going to do to keep the cabin fever at bay. I think I've narrowed what I want to do to bring in some extra money (besides work) down to either a small stationery 'business' (I don't want to use that word necessarily, but it's the only one I can come up with right now) or an attempt to make little bits of jewelry and other small handicrafts. I'm probably going to set up an Etsy store to get my potential work out to the masses, but at this point, I'm still figuring things out. But I am much farther along than I was a week ago. Even pulled out the smelly laptop to do some work this week. Made me realize how craptacularly slow it really is, but handy nonetheless.

Fingers crossed I can keep up the small amount of momentum that I've got going for me.

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I used a technique on the lily photo I found on Dooce.com. I love the look of Heather's photos and am always looking for new ways to make my pictures look just a little different than the original.

Also, should anyone pop by and deride me for supporting Dooce, stuff it. I like what Heather writes, but don't always agree with her. She seems like the type of person I'd probably be friends with if she lived on the edge of the Canadian prairies. In fact, I think I have a friend just like her and her personality (and sheer outrageousness) is what makes her (my friend) bloody awesome. So take your little junior high bitchfest somewhere else. I'm beyond caring what you have to say :)

Crap shoot

As part of my 'how do I make enough money to keep us out of the poor house' research, I've come up with some pretty out there ideas to, well, make money once I quit my job in December. I will be working part-time somewhere to help - and to get out of the house and see adults for a few hours here and there - so it's not like I'm putting all of my perverbial financial eggs in one basket or anything.

I feel like I have to explain that - the part-time job - to everyone when they ask what I'm doing come the end of my materinty leave. In reality, it's none of their damn business, but I can see why some of my friends are concerned. For the last 8 or 9 years, I've always had at least 2 jobs at a time. I seemed to thrive on working all the time. I never made much above minimum wage, but I liked being busy.

Anyway, so my ideas to bring in the dough. I'm a creative person, but not in a drawing/painting way. I can draw stick people and even then, they're pretty pathetic. I can, however, build things and sew and cross-stitch and do crafts, for lack of a better term. So I'll probably try to focus on things like that to bring in some extra cash.

I've also discovered, or re-discovered, that I'm a half-decent photographer. True, evidence of this on this particular blog may not support that statement, but I have an affinity for nature, especially fauna, photography. Such as this:

This particular shot was taken earlier this week, around noon, in my backyard. We have a few birdfeeders for the vast variety of birds we have throughout the year, including a sunflower seed feeder. We didn't notice until a couple of weeks ago that there were some strange flowers popping up on the lawn and the patio. I thought they were weeds or something that may have blown into the yard, but no. They were sunflowers. It's too bad it was so late in the season by the time they started sprouting or we may have had a semi-decent sunflower seed harvest for the feeders over the winter.

To get the shot, I held my Nikon Coolpix P80 under the flower and shot at roughly a 120º angle. I should mention, too, that the flower was only 4 or 5 inches tall, too. I used the Close-up setting, the one setting I've found to be the best for this type of photography. For my next major camera, I'd love to have one with a manual lens, but that's a long way off; right now, this is the perfect camera for me and what I use it for (mainly the close to 10,000 photos of my daughter... thank god for digital).

I've got lots of photos along the same lines. I was on a kick this summer of shooting up from under plants, trying to catch the sunlight through petals and leaves to get interesting illuminations. Some worked, some did not. Trial and error and all that, I guess. I've always loved taking pictures, something I inherited from my dad, but this is probably the first time in years that I've actually thought about what I'm taking pictures of.

And now that I've got a decent collection of random shots of fauna from this summer, I'm going to make a calendar. I plan on making it the Christmas gift to most of my family and friends and maybe, just maybe, finding somewhere to perhaps sell it, should it turn out. I will never, ever profess to be the 'best' at anything, but I think this idea may be a profitable one. If I ever get around to it.

Ooooh, crafty

Since I had our daughter in January, things have changed a lot. The usual changes - sleep, priorities, general organization of the house - were guaranteed to happen.

The one thing I didn't expect was an overwhelming desire to start crafting. And not simple crafts, either.

I've already pressed several flowers from our gardens to do shadow boxes. I'm planning on clipping fern and tree leaves to do a series of 'paintings' - basically just pressing the leaves into paint and then pressing them onto canvases. I'm going to start collecting paint chips (free!) to do some sort of collage. I've to a bunch of little wooden decorations (mainly animals) to colour for magnets, wall decorations or general knick-knacks.

There's still a couple of cross-stitch projects I need to finish that I started before she was born. There's a quilt I want to do this fall. I have a box of foam flowers and panels I've had sitting in a bag for months collecting dust.

One thing I will not do is scrapbooking. I don't understand it. I don't see the need to spend so much money on paper and little paper decorations for pages that hold one photo. When I was growing up, scrapbooking was something we did in school and all it involved was cutting out an article from the newspaper and taping it into the book with a little summary we wrote beside it. That's it. None of this fancy-schmancy lettering and stamps and cutters for us, oh no. All we had was lightly drawn lines so our summaries were written on somewhat straight lines. That and tape that dried out and yellowed within a year.

I don't begrudge scrapbookers. Everyone needs a creative outlet, but scrapbooking is not mine. No way, no how. I'll stick with my clumsy attempts at kitchy little things instead.

Perpetually digging dirt from under my nails

I've always been a fan of gardening. I haven't had the chance to seriously garden for quite a few years - the last time I had the room to plant anything substantial was when I lived with my sister and her now-husband 4 or 5 years ago. Even then, it wasn't anything scientific or dramatic - I tend to think more practically when planning a garden. I'm not a frou-frou flower type; I like my veggies. There's actual progress when you plant vegetable seeds and raise them to maturity. With flowers, they grow, they bloom, they die.

We moved into our current house last summer, at about this time of year. When we looked at the house, there was almost nothing in the gardens. More weeds than actual flowers, the rose bushes had been left to their own devices, just general mayhem. I knew I had my work cut out for me this spring when the snow melted (finally... it was late April before it was all gone) - I wanted a vegetable garden, a flower garden, and to get the 4 or 5 rose bushes we had under control.

Like I said, I'm not entirely scientific about gardening. Heck, I'm barely competent. I know that you should always plant vegetables you eat together, together. So I did. I also had to keep in mind where the best sun was, and once we cut down a tree infested with mountain pine beetle, we had a lot of newly available sun. The vegetable garden runs east-west, about 45 feet in length, 6 feet wide. Before I even started planting anything, I had to weed and move and destroy what the previous owners had left for us. I ended up leaving a rose bush, a Bachelor's Button plant (that'd be the one up above, with the bee) and a Sedum plant. The latter two I plan on moving in the fall once everything starts dying off. But the weeding. God, the weeding. And the overabundance of crabapple tree sprouts threatening to take over my garden from our neighbours' yard. Grr.

So I started my year digging up old plants - including many, many, many lilies, tulips and daisies - and transplanting many of them to our perennial garden. Well, our current perennial garden - I have grand plans for this fall and next summer, but I'll get to that in a second. I had no idea what a lot of the plants were that I was dealing with and still don't, to be honest. I have 5 different varieties of ferns in the perennial garden. I just water everything equally and keep an eye on anything I'm unfamiliar with and try to figure out what to do if they start dying. Books and the internet (and the local horticultrual line run by the local university) are wonderful things.

I had no great intentions for my vegetable garden this year. I knew that there was a veggie garden planted previously - row stakes for spinach and carrots were still in the garden - but I knew it'd be a challenge to actually grow anything in my garden because of the random crabapple tree shoots, wall o'daisies and the 'is it a weed or a flower?' game. But I managed to get a fair bit planted, including:
-zucchini
-tomatoes
-2 kinds of cherry tomatoes
-green peppers
-yellow onions
-green bush beans
-yellow bush beans
-peas
And then there's the carrots, lettuce and radishes.

I decided to try something different this year with the carrots, lettuce and radishes. Because of the tree sprouts, I lost a fair bit - about a quarter - of useable land for my garden. So I planted the carrots, lettuce and radishes in containers. With little to no success. I starved the first batch of carrots and lettuce I planted; one of the first batches of radishes were growing fine and then started to drown. The other batch just didn't grow at all. Lesson learned - don't do this again. The cherry tomatoes, on the other hand... oh, sweet success.

I had tried growing cherry tomatoes directly in the ground before. No luck. So I tried them in containers - 3 plants to each 3-foot long container. I chose 2 different varieties this year as I had in the past and oh, wow... I don't know if they're officially cross-breeding, but the amount of fruit (and it is a fruit) they two plants have been producing is more than impressive. The two plants I have this year aren't nearly as high as the ones I grew in the first year I tried this - this year, they're maybe 4 feet high; first time, almost 7 feet. But the summer is not over... yet. As I've done with all my flowering veggies (which seems to be most of them), I've tried to keep some flowers in the general area for what pollination I can get. But this year's been slow for bees and other pollinating insects... and then there's the zucchini.

My poor zucchini. I've never grown zucchini before, but I did successfully grow pumpkins 13 years ago. And zucchini is perfect for baby food. And chocolate zucchini cake... mmm. So I started the zucchini in the house in late March so it would be ready for planting in May (or June, as was the case this year). Everything looked okay; some of the plants were a little weaker looking than others, but they all survived. They started flowering and perking up and growing... and then there were no little zucchinis anywhere. I tried to figure out what was wrong and the only thing I've been able to come up with is I have a whole bunch of male plants. No female plants at all. None. So this morning, in an act of desperation, I went out, armed with a dozen Q-tips, and pollinated my zucchini. We'll see if anything comes of my very desperate attempt to salvage my zucchini in a few weeks.

As for everything else, I have a couple of peppers, some peas (yay!), half a dozen tomatoes (beef steak) and close to a dozen yellow onions. The beans are still flowering, and if they're anything like the peas, they will be sprouting in the next few days and I'll be surprised when I see how big they've gotten. I'm hoping for a moderate harvest this year and if the weather cooperates - 10 days from now, the forecast high is 37C... crap - I should be able to use a fair bit of it for food for my daughter. And then I'll step back and figure out what to do next year to make the garden even better. We also plan on having the garden roto-tilled to try to take care of the tree shoot issue. I have no idea what else to do about them, beyond cutting the neighbour's tree down and that's not going to happen.

As for the flower gardens - the perennial strip garden in the back, the small garden on the north side, the garden under our picture window in the front of the house and the jungle on the south side - I have plans. I want to get more perennials, but have to deal with the south side jungle first. We have oodles of lilies and tulips, that while beautiful, are a bit overdone in such a small space. I plan on digging up the whole garden (14'x2' or so) and saving some of the bulbs. I'm going to try to find someone to trade bulbs with before just dumping them either in the garbage or trying to fit them into another garden.

I plan on taking up the lawn that's on that side of the house as well. We have a row of lilacs and caraganas between the lawn and the sidewalk that
provide some shade, but not a lot, depending on the day... and there's also a dogwood and an overwhelming vine at the west end of that stretch, too. I've been doing a bit of light research into English gardens to see if I could possibly do something like that in that space (14'x6-7'). But no final plans yet, outside of 'must remove everything there now'. I want something soothing and approachable, not something that is so overwhelming and frightening that no one wants to approach it.

We - or at least I, as this is my grand plan - are going to make some stepping stones, including one for our daughter along the same lines as those plaster casts parents do of their children's hands at a young age. I want to encourage her to get interested in gardening at an early age and totally plan on letting her have a small garden when she expresses interest. She's only 7 months old, so I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of years. We also have our rain barrell on that side of the house, too, which my dad wants to move in order to take advantage of both downspouts on the south side of the house. Rain barrels? Best ideas, ever.

But we plan on staying in this house for a bit so we've got some time to get everything done. There's also the vine we want to train in the patio. And the rose bushes I have to rescue and possibly move. And the potential hedge that will double as a fence in the front yard. And how I'm going to keep my lavender from being overrun by thistles. Sigh. I find gardening quite therapeutic, but also quite painful as I'm stupid and always forget to bend with my knees, so I end up paying for half an hour of gardening for a week. But it's nice to know that in the end, you grew something. Even if it's just a simple little flower, you still grew it. Makes one feel slightly omnipotent, really :)

My camera's a Nikon CoolPix P80.

Can't see the street for the grass

Recently in my little burgh, there's been a great debate on whether or not it should be a by-law to force homeowners to make sure the boulevards (def. 2) in front of their homes are cut regularly. Holy hell, did that ever go over well... kind of like a tonne of bricks.

For the last few years, homeowners - for the most part - have just cut the grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of their homes just because. To not do so would just be odd, I think. Prior to this - maybe 8-10 years ago - the city actually employed people, usually students, to go along with push-mowers and cut the grass. I know this because I was one of those students. I only lasted a couple of weeks, but I vividly remember having to cut 17 blocks (both sides of the street) of grass in a day. Oh, the fun.

So the mayor of this city (and I use that term loosely) decides that because 4% (or some random small percentage) of the city's boulevards aren't being taken care of by homeowners, there should be a law telling homeowners that they MUST cut the grass. In other words, the mayor wanted to force the 96% of the homeowners in this city to do something they already do, or face a penalty. Gee, Mr. Mayor, thanks for thinking the majority of the city is a bunch of incompentent fools. Oh, what's that - this debate is far more important than anything else going on in this city? Silly us.

I don't know why he couldn't have just come out and said, "Hey, citizens. I know that it's summer and sometimes we overlook the boulevards - how about you take care of those, too?" But no. Heavy-handedness is apparently the only way to deal with things in our city. But given most of the decisions that this mayor and his council have made in the recent past, not a shock at all.

Here's how I would have handled it, if I were in charge (this will be a recurring theme, I guarantee it):

• I would have tried encouraging people to take pride in their city for a change. There are few, if any, people who actually take serious pride in our city. For the most part - and I'm included in this number - people here like to bitch. ALL THE TIME.

• I would have suggested that if I was an unemployed 15 year old with access to a lawnmower, perhaps there was a business opportunity for a bit of extra cash for the summer (or for a future car). Why don't 15 year olds have lawnmowing businesses anymore?

• I would have come up with a completely new plan for dealing with this, which would incorporate Communities In Bloom. Our city (or at least, the Parks Dept.) is so hung up on this competition every year, that they put out view-impeding flower pots on the main streets. Why not take that idea - 'prettying up' the city, for lack of a better term - and work with the local greenhouses and offer citizens a grab bag of flowers, wild grasses, ornamental groundcovers for something like $20. They could use it either in their own gardens or - and this should be the real purpose - dig up the boulevard in front of their homes and replace all that grass with plants.

All he had to do was suggest that people take care of the boulevards, not be all totalitarian with this request. But, no. Yet another thing that's wrong with this city.

On the flipside to this whole 'must cut grass' story, Windsor, Ontario is going into it's 15th week of a city employee's strike. Because there's been no organized grass cutting of city property, wild grasses and flowers have returned, along with birds and wildlife that haven't been seen in the area for years. The biggest plus to this? The city has agreed to keep 100-200 acres of the natural landscape. I think it's an awesome idea and one that would never, ever fly in my city because 'it looks bad'. Yes, and grass shorn to within a millimeter of it's life, frying in the summer sun, is so beautiful.

Sigh.