Peonies

'Bowl of Beauty'

I love peonies. I really wanted to have a fresh bouquet of them when I got married, but the florist told me that they couldn't guarantee that the colors I liked would be in bloom and available on the specific date so I went with pink and creamy white roses instead. Still, I love peonies.

I don't even have many peonies. I have one that is the most established that does very well and four others. I don't even know what three of them are because they haven't bloomed yet (peonies can pitch a fit and fail to bloom for one to three years after being moved or when divided too small). One of them is especially valuable - it belonged to Matt's grandmother and my mother-in-law graciously shared a division with me when we moved into our house several years ago.

'Sarah Bernhardt'

I'm definitely not a peony expert, but there are some things I do know about them. Peonies are beautiful. They're reliable when planted properly (fair amount of sun, no more than about 2" deep - including mulch, and with compost mixed in). They're considered heirloom plants because they last for years and years and can be passed down to future generations. They're hardy and easy to grow, a good "beginner plant". The foliage is very pretty (mounding 2-3', generally) and is deciduous. Their only downside is that they only bloom once a year. However, you can pick cultivars based on bloom time so that you can have blooms for an extended period. There are also three types of peonies: herbaceous (die back in winter), tree (foliage dies back in winter but the stems remain), and intersectional (cross between the two, dies back in winter).

Fall is the best time to plant peonies. You can mail-order freshly dug bare-root peonies and plant them now through late October. (This gives them time to settle in before the freezing weather comes.) I've bought potted peonies in the summer and planted them, but they're more likely to take off a year from blooming when you do this. You raise the odds of getting a few blooms the following spring if you plant large roots in the fall.

'Ann Berry Cousins'

Garden Watchdog, my go-to source for mail-order plants, allows customers to rate their good and bad experiences with mail-order companies. Aldeman Gardens is rated at the top of the list.

'Festiva Maxima' - white with specks of crimson.

Tips when planting & growing peonies:
- pick a spot where the peony will stay. They don't like to be moved. It should be sunny and away from encroaching large roots of trees and large shrubs.
- dig a hole 2-3' wide and about 1' deep. Mix in good compost.
- place the roots so that the crown (where the top of the root meets the bottom of the stalks) is no more than 2" deep - peonies need a winter chill to bloom
- the leaves die back in the fall. If they were healthy all year, I generally leave the browned leaves to protect the plant until new shoots emerge in spring.
- if a hard freeze hits after the shoots have emerged in spring, you can cover them with mulch to protect them and future flower buds.
- ants love peonies' blooms, but don't worry, they won't hurt them.
- peonies make great cut flowers and smell very nice too!

The Joke's On You

At first, I started to laugh when I read a headline about a man getting glued to a toilet seat, but after reading the article, I felt pretty bad for the guy. Yikes! The poor man had to be helped by paramedics when he sat on a toilet seat at a shopping mall after someone put super glue on it. Can you imagine having a whole ambulance and (probably) lots of other people having to help pull you off of a public restroom toilet?! It's like one of those bad dreams I have where I'm naked in public or have to use a restroom without a door in a crowded place. Makes me shudder just to think about it, not laugh like I do every time I watch Flick get stuck to the flag pole in A Christmas Story.

As kids, we participated in - as well as were on the receiving end of - a lot of pranks. We toilet papered just about everyone in the youth group, plus a few assistant pastors and ministers of music. We put one another's underwear in the freezer, put shaving cream in the youth guy's socks at a lock-in, I even duct-taped Amy Beth to the fort in our back yard once. In college, Amy Beth's friends had a great prank war. Someone dumped something like 20 lbs of kitty litter on her bed in the dorm (how did the boys get into the girls' dorm without an escort, anyway?), and they filled a boy's bathroom with sticky marshmallows and balloons. Matt's parents also filled two friends' bathroom with balloons when the couple went on their honeymoon.

At work, we went through a great phase of practical jokes like flipping all of someone's shelved books upside down, putting sticky sugar water on someone's chair arms, and changing out people's office door name plates or adding silly slogans to them.

Some pranks were not quite as funny. I somehow thought it would be hilarious (what was I thinking) to put hair gel in my teacher's chair in the 6th grade - yeah, got paddled for that one. One family of the youth group got their house rolled two days in a row (although I can plead partial innocence on that one). It was pretty obvious after the fact in both instances that the jokes probably weren't the best ideas ever.

I was also the butt of a few pranks. One girl thought it would be funny (actually, she was probably being mean on purpose, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt) to matte my hair with chocolate cake when I fell asleep at a slumber party. Another two girls (you know, the "cool girls" in 6th grade) put salsa in my coke and laughed at me, making me feel paranoid when I kept saying it tasted funny. 6th grade was a rough year.

So, where's the line between a funny prank and one that goes too far? It's been a while since I've been party to a really good prank. I'm up for it when it's fun and not mean-spirited. You have to know the person you're pranking, too, to ensure that they won't take it personally. However, it's also really easy for a harmless prank to just go too far.

San Fran by Food

Matt, Becca, Ron, Anny, Michael. We love to eat!

We did so much during our ten day stay in Cali that I was trying to figure out how to post about it succinctly without boring anyone to the point of clicking to the next blog on their blogroll. We saw and ate a lot... which makes me think I should sum some of it up by what we ate. We ate like kings all week, a wonderful side effect of visiting family who are looking for a good excuse to treat you to a week with no mandatory cooking and clean-up.

Dinner at the house one night. Ron's sauce over chicken ravioli.

We ate curry in Japan Town, crab cakes in Tiburon, salads too pretty to touch in San Simeon, Chinese at Win's, and Anny's incredible home-cooked fresh sea bass.. But the two best places we ate out at were Robin's in Cambria and, of course, Chez Pannisse in Berkley.

Salad at Sebastian's (a bistro/general store/post office) in San Simeon.

Monday night we had dinner in Cambria (South of Big Sur) at Robins Restaurant, which serves wonderful food from all over the world. I got the crispy tempeh korma, which is an Indian curry dish, and Matt ordered their lobster quesadillas (which you know I ate some of). I hadn't had Indian food since our honeymoon but was feeling adventurous, and it really paid off. Wow! It was just the right amount of make-your-nose-run spicy and I had to keep stealing bites from my fruit chutney to cool off my mouth. Let me say that this was just one of those meals where I was worthless afterwards. Something about really good food just puts me to sleep after I eat it. We went back to the hotel where I proceeded to pass out at 9:30.

Thursday morning we headed over to the North Face outlet to kill some time before a late lunch. You can't just walk into Chez Panisse. Ron and Anny made reservations a couple weeks in advance, and we still only got a spot for 2:30, in the cafe. Still, I'm not complaining! Reservations for the Restaurant (dinner only) through Open Table list the next available date for a party of 2 as September 9th. Gees.

House-made rigatoni.

It was the pinnacle of the week's worth of food... I've been wanting to eat here since Lynne told me about Alice Waters. I saw her on TV and read a little about all of the philanthropy and education that she does, and have been dying to eat at her restaurant in Berkley ever since.

We all got something different. I went with the fixed menu: garden salad, house-made rigatoni with eggplant, tomato, basil, and ricotta salata, with a bowl of local summer fruits. The waitress recommended the Chez Panisse Zinfandel with it, which was excellent. Matt had the wood oven-roasted local squid with romesco sauce and the chicken leg al mattone with romano beans (tasted like the longest, sweetest, crispest snow peas you've ever tasted) and a piece of angel food cake with berry compote and crem fraiche for dessert. (One of the many perks of being married to Matt is that I always get to taste two dishes... he's great about sharing). The rest of the group got the insalata caprese and rocket salad with figs and mint for their appetizers, the halibut, pork leg, and rigatoni as main courses.

Matt's chicken and scrumptious beans.

OMG! Every dish was just wonderful, and the prices were very reasonable - especially for the quality of the food and drink. Of course I had to take photos of everything and also grabbed an extra menu for my favorite foodie. Would I go back? In a heart beat! Would I recommend? Absolutely! If you're ever going to be in Berkley, make a reservation and eat your heart out. It'll make you wanna slap your mom (but please don't slap my mom or she'll hit you with her floppy shoe!).

Fruit bowl for dessert, half eaten.

I told Matt it's too bad I can't live out in Berkley. Something about their terrible treatment of the military just doesn't sit right with me. But, I can enjoy their food when we're out for a visit.

Too bad we don't have one here.

Cali: the Basics

Big Sur area.

We had a great trip/visit to see family out on the West Coast. There is so much to do and see out there, every time we visit we do something different.

On our last trip out, we did Yosemite and Nappa in addition to the American LeMans Series race at Laguna Seca and Matt's very first HPDE (at Thunderhill Raceway), having done all of the San Fran touristy spots and the redwoods the trip before.

This time we did even more. I'm almost tired thinking about all of the things we saw and the food we ate (there was a LOT of food... more on that later).

We started off the trip with a late night dinner in downtown San Francisco around midnight after our flight got in. Ron and Anny took us to Mel's Drive-In. The food was good, but what stood out more were the number of drag queens we saw. I've never seen so many trannies in my entire life as I did in the 5 minutes spent walking to and from the car! I guess that part of town is hopping with 6' foot tall "women" at 12 midnight on a Friday night! We normal women would never get any second looks from any male passersby in that part of town... after all, who can compete with those long legs in such short skirts?

Taiko Dojo.

Saturday was spent enjoying my in-laws beautiful new house just between Sausalito and Nappa and then we went down to the Japan Town Street Festival. What fun! We got to see a taiko dojo demonstration (you know, the big drums) and chowed down at a great Japanese restaurant.


We ran over to Angel Island and visited the West Coast's version of Ellis Island. It was sad to read about the treatment of so many Asians who wanted to gain admittance into the United States through the proper channels. Apparently some were detained for months before being shipped back to their homelands, without ever being able to step into the country. We took a segway tour of the island and took in the beautiful views of the bay and the SF skyline. Breathtaking!

On the segways.

San Francisco skyline from Angel Island.

Matt, Becca, Anny, and Ron. Stopping for a break and a photo.

Monday and Tuesday were spent driving down Highway 1 to Big Sur and Moonstone Beach after a stop at the Monterey Aquarium (don't go to the aquarium right before school starts... it was a mad house!!). We toured Hearst Castle and learned all about William Randolf Hearst. He made a fortune in the media empire and built a beautiful ginormous house on the coastline. His wife eventually separated from him after tiring of his longtime affair with the actress Marion Davies, so the girlfriend moved into the castle and they lived out their affair openly for years until his death. When the movie Citizen Kane came out (it was loosely based on his life and thought to have portrayed Davies as a "talentless drunk"), he tried unsuccessfully to block the movie's release with a huge payoff. In the end, he barred all of his newspapers from reviewing the movie (or even mentioning it in print).

Hearst Castle's outdoor pool. How would you like to swim in THAT!

View from the side of one of the guest houses.

Michael, Matt's "little" brother (who at 6' 6-7" is even taller than Matt) came in on Wednesday. We did some stuff around town for a couple of days - visiting Sausalito and going over to Wine Country Motorsports at Sears Point so the boys could find a race seat for the e30 that they actually fit in! After that, the boys were off to Monterey. They had LOTS of car drooling to do. :)

Michael actually fits in this seat!

Anny and I decided to make a stop at the outlets in Gilroy for a day and met up with the boys later. The outlets were almost as good as the one north of Atlanta. I used to hate shopping. I actually enjoy it now, but only do it when I can find a good deal. I can't justify shopping at home when I can go into the Banana Republic Outlet and get the same cute clothes for so much less! Makes it easier too, just save up and knock out all of the shopping I'll need for a while in one shot. I prefer to go with the girls, however. Even though Matt's never complained, I know it's just not his thing.

Matt admiring an old race car.
I spent a lot of time watching him do this over and over. :)

Speaking of his thing... he got three full days of it. While he didn't get to race himself, he did get to see some really cool cars. The boys all went to the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca on Friday and Anny and I joined them on Saturday. They had some pretty incredible cars. Really old classic race cars. Beautiful stuff. The best part is, they actually race them! We sat through all 8 races that day and had a great time. I've never seen anyone else willing to race their multi-million dollar antique race car, and risk crashing. We saw several spin outs and close calls, and one guy hit the tire wall just out of our sight.

Pebble Beach Concours

The next day, we headed over to Pebble Beach for the Concours d'Elegance. I'm not as into cars as my honey, but for some reason, I've been wanting to go to this car show for a while now. It just looked like fun. It was, but I ended up enjoying the Historics more (because they actually drive their cars, not just wax them and keep them in the garage all shined up). The sights at Pebble Beach were definitely prettier - it's an exclusive golf course, and they had cars lined up on the fairway RIGHT on the cliffs over the water. Gorgeous! (The cars and the view).



Everything I learned about the two events can be summed up by dress (I'm hoping Matt will post his own opinions on the events later). Saturday we wore what I consider "California casual" - nice shirts, shorts, wind breakers, and our Auburn ball caps. Not so much on Sunday. I bought a special hat at a shop in downtown Sausalito to wear to the Concours - no ball caps for girls! Definitely nicer dress, and we were still under dressed compared to a lot of the people. I've never seen such fine hats and shiny cars. It was a little pretentious, but still fun. Not sure I'm dying to go back, but I really had fun and am so glad we got to go.

It was a great trip. I think next time we should go in the winter so that we can finally check out Tahoe and spend some days on the slopes!

Too bad we go used to the pretty, dry weather. We got smacked in the face when we walked off the plane with the hot humid air of the South. Gotta love it!

Alive

So, we're BAAACK (cue Poltergeist sound clip). After a week and a half in Cali, we got back last night.

Just trying to get laundry done, unpack, and eventually go through all of our pictures. Plus, grad school starts back Thursday and we've got a wedding on Saturday. I plan to fit a nap in there sometime though!

One highlight... met Jay Leno; we were just walking through the paddocks at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca on Saturday and there he was, checking out all of the cool old race cars. He posed for a photo with me and Matt shook his hand.

Nice guy, but I did notice that he has an enormous head (and I come from a family full of bobble-headed people, myself included!)

Jay and me; we're friends. ;)

Granite in Kitchen

View with stove top.

So, after weeks and weeks of back and forth, we finally narrowed down our granite color choices to just a few. Then, we went down to the cabinet place and picked out the slab that we liked best. I'd suggest doing this as there are lots of colors that are similar, but varying in price. Pick the lower-priced shades and then go pick out the slab that you like best. Even within the same "name", the slabs will vary on coloring.

We went with the normal polished finish instead of the brushed. We plan to eventually outgrow this house and the polished granite is much more common/popular than the softer-feeling texture of the brushed finish. Matt still likes the brushed best and we may keep that in mind for whenever we move to a different house.

Old, dark counters.

We ended up using the local counter top place that my parents used when they installed their granite instead of Lowe's - but not for lack of want. We loved the Lowe's guy. He was so helpful and informative. The other guys just came out about $400 less, so that was really a no-brainer.

We picked out polished New Venetian Gold (aka Napoli Gold) at $49/sq. foot with free edge profile and install - much less than the $70 sq-foot we'd estimated for the Santa Cecilia brushed. There was an extra charge for the sink cutout, but that was a standard rate. I was really happy with the price - it came out to be about 60-70% of what I had originally budgeted.

Angled close-up. It's hard to see, but there are chunks of gold, brownish-copper, metallics, and black against the tan background.

Before settling on a color, I googled a few of the color names and stumbled upon Southern Hospitality's post on her kitchen remodel. This lady is a big home decorator and I've been periodically checking her blog since. Not sure I am bold enough to do a lot of the stuff she does in her home, but it's still fun to read and get ideas from since I don't have a decorator's bone in my body!

Seeing her photos of the lighter granite, Matt and I seriously considered a very similar color. In the end, I'm glad we went just a pinch darker. We have darker solid wood cabinets with our black appliances and I think we made a good choice. I really think the counters tie the brown and black together beautifully without being as dark as before.

We saved a little money by doing the tear out of the old countertops ourselves (and by ourselves - I mean Matt did it while I worked furiously on a take home final). He said it wasn't bad - just a few screws and some scraping of the silicone off of the walls. He also disconnected the old sink and pulled out our stove.

I really like the brushed stainless faucet we picked out; it came with the soap dispenser.

The installers were great - they came out and measured for our template last Tuesday and then came back and installed the granite the next day. There was a little hiccup with the extra notches needed for our stove to fit in, but they came out right away and fixed it once we realized there was a problem.

Plumbing hook up.

Matt reconnected the plumbing to the new sink, and added an in-line filter at the same time. We thought about getting one of those separate filtered water spouts, but decided that 5 faucet fixture holes was a little excessive and opted for the 3M-brand Filtrete system that will filter ALL of the cold water coming out of the faucet. I tested it out and it tastes yummy. Anyone want a slightly used Pur faucet hookup and extra filter?

Matt's awesome handiwork with new 3M Filtrete under-counter filter!

One of the things I liked about the house when we bought it was the dark color of the countertops, but the lighter shade we have now looks so much better. It's a small kitchen and the shiny granite really seems to brighten it up a bit!

Original formica.

Stripped.

New granite!

Matt had them extend the granite out a little in the front and on the sides, just to give us a teeny bit more counter space. He also asked them to round the ends with a nice semi-circle, which I think looks great. Since I talked him into the polished finish, he picked out the 1/4 bevel edging, which also looks really good.

New black sink. It looks gray in the photo, but is shiny black in person.

I've been extremely pleased with our new sink. Coupled with the tall faucet, this deep sink gives so much more room than we had before in our ridiculously shallow (6") previous sink. Matt says, "You can hide a week's worth of dishes in there!" Ha! I'm sure it will be tested out very soon.

I'm really happy with everything and am looking forward to enjoying it for several years. This summer marked 4 years since we've been in the house, and this was the first (interior) change that we made (besides painting). We're still talking about installing that back splash this fall (which was the reason we went to the counter top department in Lowe's in the first place) and are mulling the idea of putting in real tile in the kitchen at some point as well. With Ace's recent digging and mud tracking, I'm also trying to figure out how I can budget to replace the den carpet with hardwood at some point. I hope I haven't unleashed a beast...

New House Fun

We spent part of Saturday helping the new home owners get their house move-in ready!

Actually, the house is in GREAT shape and is already move-in-ready; we just helped paint and clean up the yard a little before the big furniture gets moved in.

I really like the blue.

Manda touching up the navy accent wall.

Wade spackled the laundry room wall and smoothed things out.

Ryan's mom, Bonnie, does lots of specialty painting and his sister Melissa is an interior designer. What a pair! Bonnie uses so much paint that she gets a discount from Benjamin Moore and picked it up as her housewarming gift to the newlyweds.

Bonnie and Melissa are the interior experts! Bonnie also loves to garden and I may have to invite myself over to see her stuff some time. ;)

Amy didn't want to repaint the entire house, just the master bedroom, master bath, laundry room, and an accent wall in one of the guest rooms. Did you notice the crown molding and beautiful corner blocks? They're present throughout most of the house and I'm really jealous!

Amy and Ryan also have a fabulous back yard. I'm so jealous of the row of mature crepe myrtles along the fence that make their backyard so extremely private. I think I'm going to add them to our south fence line to help protect from the (nice but noisy) neighbor boys who like to harass the dogs.

We spent a lot of time admiring their back yard. Dad also did a lot of tilling and wood chipping

Ryan mowing his very own yard. He looks like he's having fun.

Steve trimmed a lot of trees that hung over the fence line.

Drip Line Installation

Pots with drip lines running up the back side.

I installed a drip irrigation system this weekend for the patio pots and hanging baskets. I bought a kit that included everything I needed as well as a timer so that I can set it up to auto-water everything whenever we go out of town.

The kit I got is available through Amazon for about $38 with free shipping. You can buy all of the items you'll need separately at Lowe's, but the timers are generally a bit more expensive than when buying the kit. I bought some extra parts because I thought I might want to hook up more drippers than the 20 that came in the kit, but ended up returning all of the extra parts I bought from Lowe's (except for the extra tubing - I did need a little more than the 75' that came in the kit). One thing I did learn - wear gloves - your fingers will hurt after pressing all of the tube ends and connectors together. The Mr. Landscape brand hose from Lowe's was a little softer than the one in the kit and didn't hurt as much though.

Everything in my Rain Bird kit, plus wire cutters and hammer.

Tools needed: Hammer and Wire cutters. That's it! This was a very easy project and I did everything myself (except jam the 1/4" tubing into the hose adapter - Matt did that). It took about 2 hours, but would be quicker if I ever did it again since now I know what to do.

What you'll need if you buy everything separately:
- rubber hose 1/4" diameter at the length desired for your setup
- 1/4" to faucet outlet adapter
- timer (if you want one)
- T-connectors for the 1/4" hose
- mounting clamps (if you're running the hose up a trellis or along a deck)
- drippers: combination of 1/2, 1, or more gal-per-hour drippers. Also note: some drippers are designed to go on the end of the line. Others are in-line (you have to put tubing on both ends of the dripper). Get what you'll need according to how you'd like to set yours up.
- end-of-line clamps (if you don't put an end-of-the-line dripper there).
- support stakes (to hold the lines in the flower bed and the drippers in the pots).
- flow control (goes into the adapter that screws onto the faucet; limits the water pressure in the hose and protects your system).

Here's a good article that explains all of the pieces above and why you need them.

1/4 inch tubing in faucet connector. The timer will go between the faucet outlet and the blue connector when I need to use it. There's also a pressure regulator in the faucet hook-up to protect the tubing from high water pressures.

First, we hooked the 1/4" rubber hose into the faucet adapter and screwed it onto the hose outlet. I ran the tubing under some shrubs through the flower bed to the edge of the patio.

At each spot that I wanted to install a dripper, I cut the tube and inserted a T-connector, adding a short piece of hose onto the T with a dripper at the end that would sit in a pot. Then I hooked up the hose and ran it along the edge of the flower bed until I got to the next pot that needed a dripper. For the bigger pots, I added extra drippers in series (loops) or parallel, in combinations of 1 and/or 1/2 gallon-per-hour drippers to meet the need based on the size of the pot.

Three in-line drippers in series for a very large pot.

When I got to the trellis, I went up the post by securing the drip line using the fasteners (this is where you'll use the hammer). Once my jasmine fills in the trellis, you won't be able to see the drip line running up the post.

Securing the t-connector with a mounting clamp above a hanging basket.

(On a ladder) Running the hose down to the hanging basket and securing a couple of drippers on the end.

I ran the line across the top of the pergola, in between the boards to stay more inconspicuous and cut the line at the top of the hooks that hold the hanging baskets. T-connectors were inserted and a drip line that ran down to each hanging basket. At the end of the line, I added three drippers so that the basket would be evenly watered.

Running the hose back down the trellis.

At the end of the pergola, I ran the line back down the North trellis, stopping off to add some side lines for the pots that sit on that side of the patio. At the end, I also added a couple of drippers to water the plants in the small bed that doesn't already have any drip hoses yet.

I turned on the faucet at 1/2 a turn for 20 minutes to test it all out. It looks like I can water everything in about 10-15 minutes with no problems. I easily spent at least that long doing it by hand at full water pressure. This is going to save a lot of time (and water)!

Dripping dripper.

Why didn't I do this sooner?!!