Happy Gardening Anniversary

The small xeriscape garden bed

I just got an email that made my day. It was from Gardner's Supply Company wishing me a Happy Anniversary since my first order with them was April 18, 2005. 

I ordered a Tomato Success Kit from Gardner's Supply so I could grow some vegetables in pots even though I didn't have a garden. I've had some huge success and huge failures in the 3 seasons that I've grown in the success kit. Cherry tomatoes = OMG I can't eat another tomato by the end of the season. Heirloom tomatoes = it's October and I'd really like one ripe tomato before the frost kicks in.

The gardening project I'm most proud of though is my xeriscape garden. When I first moved to the townhouse, it had two giant, spiderweb infested, fire-hazard dry evergreen bushes straddling the front walk. When I'd leave the house in the morning for work, I'd put both arms straight out in front of me and scissor them as I walked to keep the spider webs from hitting me in the face. I lived with this for three years.

But then, Will moved in and our first project was to tackle the outside - rebuild the back deck and do something about the evergreen bushes. We braved the heat and prickles that summer and spent a miserable weekend cutting back and hauling away the bushes. 

My initial plan was to grind the stumps so we could have a flat garden. But, being smart and responsible we had the utility company come out to mark where all of our pipes were and the gas line went right under one of the bushes. So, Plan B emerged and we used leftover wood from our big deck project to build raised garden beds.

I knew I wanted a xeriscape garden out front because it gets so much heat and sun. I had fallen madly in love with the Xeric Aroma Garden from High Country Gardens. It was sold out for the spring, so I had to wait until the fall to get my plants. They were tiny when they arrived, and Will was embarrassed by our teeny tiny plants randomly spaced our huge planters. But the next spring-summer-fall, they went gangbusters and grew into giant behemoths that gave off the most amazing scent whenever it rained. Rather than defending myself against the plants in the front, I touched them whenever I walked by to release the herby scents from each of the plants.

I can take my Tomato Success Kit with me to the new house, but I have to leave behind my aroma garden. It will be so hard to leave behind something that I've spent so much time nurturing. The good news though, is that I'll have a blank slate (once I clear out all of the new house's weeds & sucker trees) to start over with a new garden that I know I'll love just as much as this one.

The Trappings of Fame

I'm famous at my grocery store. Or, maybe more accurately my reusable bag collection is famous at my grocery store. 

I did a light trip to the store tonight to pick up some essentials and veggies and my ever-refilling Rx. As I cruised up toward the front of the store to ring up my purchases I passed by two check out lanes with the weird cashiers and picked a lane with a bit more of a line, but no weirdo at the helm. 

The cashier gave me a knowing smile as he rung up the rest of the groceries for the woman in front of me. I had a moment of, "Oh my God, he knows who I am. Why does he know who I am? Does he recognize my green coat? Does he think I'm cute? That's giantly weird if he does because I usually shop with my husband."

As the cashier started ringing my groceries, he asked, "Did you get a new bag from another store?"

Ah, that's how he remembered me. We had discussed my vast collection of reusable bags before - and he always gets confused by the reusable wine bag from Zupan's. I try to pick up a bag from every grocery store that I visit for work. Oddly enough, this means that while I have reusable bags from Wegmans, Hy-Vee, New Seasons, Central Market, D'Agostino's and others, I don't have a bag from Safeway, where I do 90% of my grocery shopping.

"How many of these bags do you have?" the cashier asked. 

I had no freaking clue, so I made up a number.  But when I got home tonight, I counted up my reusable bags. I have 12 bags from grocery stores around the country, and six others from other places. And I think I actually have a few other bags in the trunk of my car. So there might be more. I could do the shopping for about a dozen Thanksgiving dinners and have room to pack it all up.

But for tonight, it meant that I had three bags of groceries, and 15 empty bags leftover to haul home. At least the boy scouts would be proud of me for being prepared.

Inching Toward Moving On

At what point do I start the break-up process with my now-under-contract-townhouse? Or did I already start it the minute I signed the paperwork to put it up for sale?

I love this house. I have since the minute I walked in the door while house hunting and saw two Birds of Paradise flowers on the dining room table beneath the orange pendant light. It was totally over my budget and my realtor was only showing me the house because he wanted to set me up with the seller. It was love at first sight with the house, not so much with the guy.

This is the last house my old-man cat lived in. This is the house where Will proposed to me. This is the house where I got really sick, and then got healthy again (and again). I still call the guest bathroom "Carrie's bathroom" after my roommate and dear friend who lived here with me for the first three years. Somewhere in this house is the ring that my mom gave me with the green stone that I'm super bummed I misplaced (okay, lost). Will and I have put a lot of work into this house - we've rebuilt the decks, redone the bathrooms, painted and painted again, replaced crunchy dead evergreen bushes with a xeriscaped garden, and so much more. 

I want to move (believe me, I wouldn't go through all the headache of house hunting for nothing). I want new and bigger projects to tackle with Will. I want potential to make a house a home without an HOA dictating how that can be done and what colors can be used to do it. I want a garden with room for more than a pot of tomatoes. And the new (potential) house is perfect for all of these wants. 

But I'm still wandering around the current house, thinking about all of the things that I'm going to miss. That will go away, right? 

What is this? The 50s?

Dear Financial World,

I find it very insulting that my decision to get married has somehow meant that I leave all decisions about money to my husband. 

I accomplished a lot in this world before getting married. I had my own career, paid my own bills, bought my own car, bought my own house, and I even managed to keep it together through some of the toughest times of my life, all before marriage. I was a complete person, emotionally and financially. 

I decided to get married because I love the guy, not because I needed a knight in shining armor. I still very much value my independence. 

So don't address all mortgage mail to my husband's attention only. And don't list him as the borrower and me as the co-borrower. I'm responsible for half the mortgage, and my ass is on the line too if we somehow can't afford what we've committed too. And when we combined accounts, why did they all go into his name only (I'm looking at you, AT&T)? We're equal partners here in these endeavors - so it would really help my frustration level if you could treat us as such.

-Anne

Whiplash

Why the neck brace, you ask? Well, let me tell you a little story about me and my insurance company...

Once upon a time, a beautiful princess named Anne had stomach pain. A kind doctor recommended some medicine for her, but the evil insurance company told him to suck it because the medicine was expensive. Along came a new year and a new, seemingly benevolent insurance company that offered to pay for the medicine, and there was peace in the land. 

But then the benevolent insurance company came down with a case of the crankies and couldn't decide if they wanted to continue paying for the expensive medicine or not. 

"We're so happy the medicine works," they wrote, "we'll continue to fund your health and happiness."

Later the same day, they wrote, "We've changed our minds, we DON'T want to pay for the medicine. Mwuhahahahaha!"

The kind doctor's kind nurse called the insurance company because she was confused. And they decided to remain benevolent and cover the medicine. And hopefully, there was peace in the land.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

For the last handful of years, Will and I have been putting spare change in old jelly jars. Once one fills up, we start on another. We've jokingly been calling this our "down payment for a house fund." I finally combined all of the jelly jar change into a purple Crown Royal bag (I don't know where that came from or why I have it, but it was hefty and could handle the massive pile we'd acquired). 

I trundled off to Safeway this afternoon with my Crown Royal bag full of change to get it counted. And would you believe that we had $92.58 in change*? Plus a few battered and beaten coins that the machine rejected. Clearly not a down payment on the house, but not a bad total either. We'll put it into the ol' savings account for new house fun.

But that's not even the biggest change around here. Our house has gone through some pretty drastic updates over the last two weeks. Since last Saturday, we've been sprucing, painting, yard selling, installing, cleaning, packing, moving & unmoving stuff, all to get the house looking nice for potential buyers. More than a few times Will and I have exclaimed, "Why didn't we do this years ago?" We're pretty pleased with how things have turned out. I'm especially in love with the laundry closet. Serious love. I want to marry it.

I was hoping to post some before and after shots tonight... but I don't have the after photos just yet. I guess that gives me an excuse for another post soon!

*That's before the coin counter took their 8.9% cut. Grrr....

Nostalgia

We are getting ready to put our house on the market.  So far, "getting ready" has entailed creating a list of the home improvement projects we didn't quite finish or get to, convincing my Mom to be our realtor, and creating piles of stuff we don't want anymore.  Needless to say, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

I went through my books and CDs today and separated out the keepers from the get-rid-ofs.  It was so much easier to get rid of the CDs than the books.  I get really, really attached to my books. Even books I didn't love, I feel like I'm somehow betraying the characters by admitting that maybe they aren't worth living in my library.  

CDs on the other hand, are pretty easy to get rid of. The good ones I've got on my computer. And the bad ones are the hardest to get rid of because I have to admit that I actually purchased that music at one point (um, Candlebox? I plead the insanity of the 90s).

I also found a whole bunch of tapes that I held onto.  Mostly mix tapes from old friends and a large collection of U2. I know I got rid of tapes a long time ago and I must have held onto U2 because the tapes are all from when they were beyond awesome. I purged the tapes, but found a few that I just couldn't get rid of:

To: Anne From: Chris Keep Jammin' in the Car, Chica. A mix tape from my friend, Christine, from our junior year of high school. Having good tunes in the car in high school was key. I took this mix with me to Architecture Camp the summer between my junior & senior years of high school and the mix became famous in my studio for its awesomeness. Plus, I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Learn Xhosa with Anne Munik. This tape is from my Xhosa language class in South Africa. Anne Munik was my teacher and she was the cutest little white lady. She had grown up on a farm outside of Cape Town and absolutely loved the Xhosa culture and language - enough to dedicate her career to teaching it to other white people so they could appreciate it as well. The thing I absolutely adored about Anne was that whenever we'd learn something contradictory from our host families to what she taught us in class, she'd say, "Well, it is their culture, so they know it best." And she'd make a note. In a country where white people had for so long ruled as oppressors, it was amazing to see this woman who not only loved and appreciated the African cultures around her, but realized that she could never be the ultimate expert despite all of her learnings. 

A Reading for Anne 2003.  I usually get my tarot cards read about once a year, usually around my birthday.  I adore my Mom's friend, Bonnie, who reads the cards and records the sessions for us. She is such a gentle soul and I love that there are people in the world that see things that I don't. I also think that this is the reading she gave me where she said I would have a husband whose birthday was very close to mine. I met Will later that year and his birthday is 5 days after mine. Coincidence? I think not.

An unopened, blank tape. You never know when you are going to need ancient relics like this.

Now that I've decided what to keep, I need to figure out what to do with the old.