Chickenminnie’s Weblog

Every spring I must do a driving tour of all my favorite nurseries to get the materials for spring planting. They all have different little specialties and styles, and each one is more fun than the next. It’s imperative that the tour be scheduled before the insane Mother’s Day shoppers, so I went last weekend.

My first stop is 30 miles south to Story’s Nursery in Freehold. With the price of gas being what it is I almost crossed it off my list, but it’s a tradition and I can’t start my garden without a visit. They had a massive fire that leveled the place a couple of years ago, but the rebuilt store is just lovely and worth the trip. It’s the only place I can find the giant nicotianas I like, and their rose selection is usually pretty good. A lot of my David Austin roses have come from there.

The next stop on my trek is Pigliavento’s Greenhouse in Guilderland. They always seem to be my best source for specialty annuals and the only place I have ever seen the Black Magic geraniums I like so much. They are a red so dark as to be nearly black, and do really well in containers.

Not far from Pigliavento’s is the Gade Farm which is probably my hands-down favorite all purpose nursery. It’s a family owned place and the people are super nice. If you are looking for small perennials this is the place, and their prices are fabulous. The bulk of my annuals come from them, heartily supplemented by the Gade Farm gift certificate I get every year from my sweetheart.

Finally, no spring tour would be complete without a trip to the Shaker Shed in Colonie. I discovered this nursery a couple of years ago and it’s the only place that carries burgundy impatiens. They also offer Cut & Come Again zinnias which do just exactly that; it’s an old fashioned variety that’s getting hard to find.

By the time I have made the rounds my Saab looks like the the flower car at a funeral home, and I’m pretty much broke. I’ll get months of pleasure from my purchases, though, and it’s all worth it.

It’s probably safe to say that spring is officially here. Everyone has their own personal benchmarks for this, and mine usually revolve around some of the spring rituals I perform every year.

The first ritual is the stowing of the snow shovels. This is always done with a certain amount of trepidation because I’m not superstitious, but rather very aware of nature’s fickle ways. It would be a bummer to put the shovels away only to have to unearth them a week or two later. Sending the shovels to the farthest reaches of my property is like putting a period at the end of a sentence; I do not want to have to revise.

Several years ago I discovered drip irrigation which works really well, but requires some attention in the spring. There are always some emitters that don’t make it through the winter, the mainline tubing sometimes heaves up out of the ground and critters have been known to chew holes in some of the tubing, but once the leaks are spotted and repaired it’s a beautiful thing. I learned early in the game to do a leak check before the plants get too tall or it’s like wrestling an anaconda in the jungle.

The final ceremony (and my personal favorite) is putting the screens in the windows. Of course this means washing every window in the place, but it’s a small price to pay for fresh air and the sound of the birds in the morning. I have to tolerate a little more street noise with the storms off, but when the lilacs and roses start to bloom and their scent wafts into the house, it’s all worth it.

Let the summer begin.

No, it’s not Christmas….it’s spring, and gardeners everywhere are rejoicing. Finally free from the ice and cold of winter we can look forward to at least six months of grubbing, weeding and dead heading. I went out last weekend and surveyed the ravages winter left behind and am pleased to report that fatalities have so far been minimal.

I lost a couple of roses this winter, but rather than feel badly I mentally cross those varieties off my list. Roses are my favorite, but I have little use for fussy types preferring instead the robust roses of the rugosa and David Austin variety which bloom repeatedly and don’t need constant spraying. There are no fancy foam rose covers in my garden; it’s tough love all the way.

After the rose inspection I check on all the first year plants. These are things that were new to the garden last year and sometimes results are mixed. A Japanese maple purchased at the end of the season at half price did very well as did a “Black Lace” elderberry which was definitely not half price. A couple of the evergreens I planted last year got pretty badly chewed up by the deer, but the parts that remain look healthy. Apparently they will have to get little burlap coats next winter like the rhododendrons do.

It will be a few weeks before the status of the “stay abeds” will be known. Those are the plants that wait until they are sure winter is past before announcing themselves, such as the hibiscus, the butterfly bush and caryopteris. Until then I must exercise some restraint and resist the urge to pronounce them prematurely dead.

This is an actual snippet of an email received from my daughter. I swear.

Yes, I may go home and paint the linen closet. I really need to stop reading Design*Sponge.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) she has inherited my compulsive urge to fix things, make things and generally repurpose everything around her, usually on the cheap. If you ever see her with a can of spray paint in her hand do not stand still for very long because you will be turned into a lamp. She is constantly devouring ideas from the web, magazines and HGTV, and her impeccably neat apartment looks like something out of a magazine.

I don’t expect her to outgrow this mania; at 47 I’m still remodeling, rebuilding and replanting everything in sight. These things happen in bursts, but happen they do. My latest project, a slipcover for my couch, will be posted soon. My parents are to blame for this do-it-yourself obsession; I’m sure I was the only kid in grade school who had a radial arm saw in her dining room. Remodeling was a fact of life for me, and it still gives me a curious sense of satisfaction to create something. I’m glad the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.

Actually, Sean would make a great lamp if you could find the right shade.

The Professor has flown to San Antonio, Texas for a few days of R & R with his sister and I have been having a good time playing bachelorette. Since I have always really enjoyed living alone it’s like a nice little mini vacation for me, and I don’t even have to leave home. I get to spread my reading materials all over the couch and hog the remote so I can od on Home & Garden Television and the Food Network. Bachelorette week invariably means great shopping, eating cereal over the sink and spending quality time with my chick. Funny note: I just looked up bachelorette in my thesaurus and one of the substitutions was spinster. Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead.

Anyway, Ken views my little vacations from him with a mixture of amusement  and consternation because he knows I don’t bother to cook for myself. Before he left this time he made some chili and put it in individual containers for me. After showing me where they were located in the refrigerator he looked at me and said, “You’re going to eat cereal over the sink, aren’t you?” He knows me well; which is one of the great things about living with him and why it’s always okay when the mini-vacation is over.

Sal’s Boutique as my friend Maryann affectionately calls the Salvation Army Store, is a blessing for thrifty clothing lovers like myself (my daughter prefers the term cheapass). As a regular customer I have managed to amass a huge cashmere collection, some fabulous sweaters and a few big name jackets, not to mention a fair amount of art pottery. Sure, you have to put up with some fairly colorful people, and it usually doesn’t smell too great in there, but that’s part of the adventure. And where else can you get an Armani jacket for seven dollars? Sal’s satisfies the “champagne taste” textile junkie in me while catering to my beer pocketbook.

Years of working in the sewing business gave me an appreciation for good clothing and fabrics, so even if I don’t buy an item there is still a chance I can experience the thrill of happening upon a couture Chanel jacket, a vintage silk cheongsam or a retro Harris Tweed suit. Sal’s is also a good place to find the occasional EBay resale item; I once paid five bucks for a silk Japanese Hapi coat which sold on EBay for seventy two dollars.

The conservationist in me appreciates the recycling aspect of my Sal’s habit.  When I get tired of a piece of clothing it goes back to the donation bin (or one of my sisters) and I get to buy more.  If I itemized on my tax return I could even write off the donations…how great is that?

March is the most wretched month. It’s long, devoid of three day weekends, and seems to sport the worst weather of any other month in the calendar. People are always crabby in March because they are sick of the cold, tired of being cooped up in the house and in desperate need of some sunlight.

Like everyone else I’m officially sick of winter, and the fact that garden catalogs have been arriving in my mailbox in great numbers since the day after Christmas is not helpful. Those of us in Zone 5 have a long way to go before planting time and even though I am a planner, the garden catalog people should not send me anything until mid March. It’s just a big fat tease and kind of mean.

About the only good thing that happens in March is my birthday. I’m going to be forty seven and realized that the old term “pushing fifty” pretty much applies now, though I will admit it’s kind of fun to say it. I have never been particularly hung up on how old I am, and I have a hard time understanding people who actually lie about it. Somehow having to remember a fake age seems like too much of a waste of energy.

The silk market bag is coming along, but I need to purchase a set of double pointed needles in order to do the decreases on the bottom; a circular needle is just not going to work. I am also working on a baby sweater which is almost instant gratification and a good thing to do between big projects.

The gigantic orange sweater is done and a picture is posted here. The only thing I hate is the zipper which is not really orange. It is not possible to find an orange separating zipper in the entire city of Albany which is rather distressing, but we don’t have a Whole Foods Market here either, so I suppose I should not be surprised (the Whole Foods Market thing is a rant for another day).

I have already started the market bag out of recycled sari silk and it’s coming out pretty well. I scammed the pattern from Lion Brand – thanks guys – and I think the only drawback to it is that you can’t put anything in it that will fall through the holes, like your favorite pen.

I have been incredibly bad about keeping up with my blog.

Classes have started at Sage and it’s nice to be in a classroom again. I’m taking Linux Administration this semester with a lady who seems pretty savvy; many of the students have taken her Java class already and seem to like her. The evening class students at Sage seem to be generally a lot younger than the ESC students which surprised me a little; I think of evening students as falling into a much older demographic.  One of the great things about the class is that half of it is a lab, so if I finish early I can leave. Homework is minimal too, although there is a sizable paper for the final project. Since I have already used Linux in a production environment I can usually get through the labs in good time and part of me is wishing I had taken a second course.

Of course, now that I am not doing hours of homework on Saturday morning I have more time to knit. My current project is a big orange cardigan to keep me warm in my freezing cold office. The yarn was purchased at a garage sale for twenty dollars; a garbage bag full of undyed skeins which I grabbed because I have always wanted to try my hand at dyeing wool. I found a nice fiber reactive dye online and chose burnt orange because I wanted to do something different. The wool dyed up pretty well and has a kind of a light and dark thing going on which looks great knitted up. The cardigan is nearly done and I’ll post a picture when it’s finished.

I can’t wait to finish the cardigan because I have a new project waiting in the wings and have forbidden myself from starting any more knitting projects. I found some great Bartlett wool online in a yummy moss green which is going to be a cabled pullover some day. Restraining myself from starting new projects is a monumental effort; I have attention deficit disorder when it comes to knitting, so starting a new project always gives me a happy little buzz. I also rationalize that I need to have different kinds of projects on the go, such as a pair of angora fingerless gloves (again for a frigid office), a baby sweater for a pregnant niece, a pair of mittens for my sister and a plain black pullover because I always need to have a “mindless” project. This restraint from starting projects does not keep me from planning projects however, and I have had to devise all kinds of creative ways to store my stash in a house as tiny as mine.