Long distance gardening

Our tenants have been getting acquainted with our garden, but they're novices so they sent us this picture to help them identify some of the greenery that's shooting up in Spring. The garden seems to grow about a foot a day at this time of year.

I got a bit over enthusiastic in my response (I miss our garden!), and sent the following back. Bit much?

The thing you took a picture of is a hollyhock. I attached a picture for you so you can see it's future. They get quite big and throw up big spurs of flowers which last most of summer in whole range of colours. The bees adore them. They self seed a lot, so if they come up in a really stupid place feel free to pull them out. Also - if you look at the backs of the leaves, you may notice some yellow spots on them. This is a common hollyhock ailment - it doesn't spread to other plants as far as I can tell and it doesn't stop them flowering, but it can make them look very bedraggled towards the end of their season. If you cut off any leaves that have the spots on at the base of the plant now, the hollyhocks will be healthier for it later on - but it won't matter if you don't. FYI the pale green sort of fronds in the bottom left of your picture are yellow poppies (very pretty) and the hairy frondy thing further up on the left is an oriental poppy. Very pleased to see the cowslip flowering away :) Actually - if I just send you this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76662872@N00/sets/72157623250176870/. That's a flickR stream of the garden over the years, it might give you an idea of what to expect!

An indoor garden

There are mischievous plans being made... Dan and I have been plotting and scheming about creating an indoor garden in our eighth floor apartment. We have very tall (14ft) ceilings and potentially the ideal solution is a hanging garden, preferably one that can be raised and lowered for watering. As always the hard landscaping is Dan's department, and it may be a little while before we have all the hardware together for such a contraption. This hasn't stopped the mad scheming of a gardener in Spring though. Credit where it's due, I was aided in this by the transatlantic Amazon vouchers I received for my birthday.

The plot thickens...

What makes this endeavour a garden over a collection of houseplants? Hopefully it will be a collection of plants that hang together (pun intended). Not only that, but to be a garden in my eyes it must also produce things you can eat. We cook a lot and we're missing the ability to add fresh herbs to our food willy-nilly for a start. But we have so much light in this space I feel it almost rude to not attempt something grander. Indoor tomatoes for a start - very doable as long as we remember to hand pollinate. I'm also intrigued by the possibility of growing them upside down. Upside down tomato plants could be quite exciting in a hanging garden...

But then the mind wonders and gets carried away. If we have the cash, what's to stop us heading down the green wall route? I've scoured the internet and these wall pockets seem to be the best designed on the market. At first glance they seem expensive - $40 each. However, when you take a closer look, they're pretty big at two feet wide. You wouldn't need a huge number of them to look effective. In fact even just one to start would be great. And I have to remind myself that $40 is only £25, which is easily what an attractive planter can set you back at the garden centre (I've never bought a planter, but that's another story). Plus, plus, plus (trying to convince my most loyal reader and husband here) - they will fit easily in a suitcase to take back to the UK when it's time to move home again.

Garden designers are constantly telling us to think of our gardens as a series of outdoor rooms (I'm still to be sold on that one). I think in my minds eye I'm planning this garden as a series of mini-gardens within our one big room. I want our garden to include terrariums as well. There tragically fashionable I know - certainly if the air of Portlandia around the books I found on Amazon is anything to go by - but they can each be a world on their own. In essence, they allow the creation of discrete habitats to suit particular plants. Instead of finding the plant to suit the position and soil conditions, I can create the conditions for the plant I want. And, if we're going down the route of terrariums, these Japanese moss balls have got to be worth a go, surely?

I am getting carried away now, and I must start a little more modestly. I bought some packets of seed at the weekend and I shall be keeping my eyes pealed for suitable temporary containers to get them sprouting. Basil, coriander and chives to start. Rosemary, thyme and sage will be better bought as plants from the Italian market, I think. Plus a lettuce mix, because if it's grown in the right way it should do well as an indoor crop.

You know, I've just come to the end of writing this post and realised the best thing about this whole scheme - no slugs and snails!! There will be no midnight slug hunts in America... (there are also, alas, no toads and frogs in this scheme, but I have reliable reports from out tenants that the population we introduced back home is thriving).

365 progress: March 2012

My conclusion thus far is that a 365 project is a hell of a lot more difficult than I realised. Starting out, I think my photography actually got worse, not better. Lots of terrible photos taken at the end of the day - of anything - just so I had a photo. Obviously it takes practice to get into the mind set! Then I started trying to log the photos as I went along on Instagram, which meant I posted my photo for day 8 very early in the day only to take at least three better ones later on... it's all very confusing! So, as April progresses I'm giving myself less rules while I try and get the hang of this. I won't pick the photo till the end of the day (or even the day after) and I'll just try to keep taking pictures, hopefully with some sort of composition - because right now my Instagram feed is absolutely terrible.

My summary calendar - when I saw this I was shocked by how dark all my pictures are...

Day 1: Birthday dinner - Dan took the brunt of my forgetfulness

Day 2: Taco

Day 3: Our apartment

Day 4: View from the bedroom window with a long exposure

Day 5: My very glamorous staircase at work

Day 6: The indoor washing line - Valentines still on the wall

Day 7: Waiting for the trolley home (Dan had a puncture)

Day 8: Lying in bed, watching Taco and the flag flying

Day 9: Plotting...

365: March 2012: New Life

Tomorrow is my Birthday. As well as making me 29 and this blog four years old, this birthday is my first as a married woman (wives get better presents right?) and my first living in America. It also means the start of my 365 project and I've decided my first task.

*drum roll*

For the remains of March my task will be to photograph (and appreciate without being miserable and homesick) my new life. My new HUSBAND, my new country, my new city, my new apartment, my new CAT, my new job, my new bike. I like the ones in capitals best of all, so they might get more photos than the others.

Here's a special bonus picture of Taco Belle being cute:

Spring clean

In the midst of what was largely a pretty lazy weekend spent hanging out with a very very very good friend, I managed to give the blog a bit of a spring clean with the virtual paint brushes - hopefully the ether with appreciate the new look as much as me. It was time for a change and some fresher colours. The space was feeling a little dark.

Oh, and - this little lady turned up in our lives. We've adopted Taco Belle after she was found homeless and pregnant on the streets of Philly. She's raised her kittens and they've all moved on to new homes, so hopefully she's ready to start a new life of luxury in our house. She's managing to combine quiet contentment with slight anxiety at the moment, quite a skill. She seems very confident despite her nerves at being in a strange new place - consequently I fear she'll be a force to be reckoned with once she's really settled in.... watch this space!

Taco sleeps...

Knitting pattern: Siri

So... I mentioned I have a new iPhone, right? I'm a little obsessed with it...

Photo's courtesy of Dan

When we moved to America, part of piecing together our new American identities was getting hold of new phone numbers and new phones. Dan stated that the previous improvised phone cover I made him several years ago was peerless in it’s ability to cushion the device through life’s tumbles.

The original phone cover - that's not it's first phone, it's so old it's not even on Ravelry. Knit in one of those chunky Rowan yarns from a few years back - Chunky Print? something like that anyway...

Being a belligerent sort of person and hoping I’d learnt a few knitting-ninja skills in the intervening years, I set out to prove him wrong. I was stash-less in a new country, so after indulging in a yarn binge at my new local (Loop - which is FABULOUS) I set about designing a dense, cushy envelope of wool. The first element I wanted to use was stranded colour-work, as it offers extra insulating powers thanks to the layering of the yarns. The second element was some sort of rib to add another dimension of cushioning depth. Taken together, these two requirements naturally invoked the brioche stitch to me. I knit the cover up on smaller than recommended needles for a tight gauge. Now our new phones have super dense, cozy homes.

I decided to write this up and release it as my second free pattern on Ravelry - just because I put so much effort into getting the design right and I was chuffed with the results. The pattern is available to download here.

Project 365

I mentioned briefly that I have a new phone - an iPhone to be precise - and as I've had to be self controlled for several years before having the means to get on the smart phone bandwagon, I'm now fully immersed. I am *trying* to be restrained and not download every app I can think of all at once, but it's truly amazing what this little gizmo can do. 

One creative project I've thought I'd like to do previously, but didn't really seem practical at the time, was some sort of photo 365 project. Now I'm obsessed with Instagram [a small selection of my recent photos litter this post] and taking pictures on my phone, it seems a bit more do-able. Having to cart around our lovely Canon SLR everyday was never really an option, just because it's kind of heavy and not practical for every situation. Also, there's no way I can find time to knit/craft everyday - but I'm sure I can take a photo of something. The act of doing something a little bit creative everyday will hopefully be a rewarding.

My 29th birthday is just over the horizon, and that seems like a good day to start a 365 project. To give myself some sort of focus and make the job a little easier I thought I might create some themes to pursue, in advance, on a weekly or monthly basis. To go into a whole year of images could be disastrous if I don't have something to focus on - equally I know I'll get bored if I have the same theme for a year. So now I have ten days to think of my first theme. I'm going to post the themes and the results here to try and keep me true to my word. If any one wants to join in, drop me a message!

Science

For a long time there wasn't any time to think about science. From about halfway through my PhD until I left that lab very recently, I felt like I was on a relentless treadmill. I'm not accusing my old lab of anything here. I was for the most part very happy there and I made a lot of very dear friends - it was more to do with my state of mind as anything else. Doing a PhD is hard, basically.

At the outset we were a new lab and we were collectively under a lot of pressure to perform quickly, my supervisor most of all. It could at times be a very stressful environment and  during a PhD you reach that point where you have to carry on no matter what because otherwise you've just wasted three years of your life. Then, somehow, we became a big lab. It no longer felt like my job was to do experiments. It felt like my job was clearing up after everybody, trying to get people to order things, getting frustrated by the trails of destruction in every room I tried to work in. Being the oldest 'in lab years' as my fellow lab mates liked to say, seemed to mean I had to be responsible for day to day things running in a vaguely smooth fashion. It also meant I was relentlessly bombarded with questions along the lines of "where's this?", "how does this work?", "can you fix this?". It could be a very enjoyable working environment, but it was not a peaceful one.

Then of course there were moments, particularly during the "thesis writing stage" (as seems to be pretty common) when I just didn't want to do science any more. It felt unrewarding, grueling and pointless. During the dark months of introspection, when you look back on all your years of data - unless your blessed with the most resilient of minds - you tend to think it's all crap. Thus, by extrapolation, you are crap. It's a simple equation based on the fact that science can be very personal - your project, your ideas, your data, your failure.

This blog for the most part operated as a sanctuary from all of that. A protected sanctuary at that. Until very recently Dan was the only person IRL that knew about it at all. Within these carefully constructed walls I could pretend that the only thing that mattered was whether my peas were going to survive the slug attacks this year, or whether that Rowan Cocoon really was the right choice for that knitting project.

BUT, Dan and I made the decision to carry on in science. More than that we decided to make the big move and do Post-Docs in America. So there's been a big shift in my head in terms of how I perceive myself - I'm not a student any more, I'm a professional. I even have a Fellowship (money from a funding agency). In terms of my actual abilities the difference is purely psychological - but that's not to undermine the significance of that shift. 

What I'm trying to say in a very long winded fashion, is that I might start to blog a bit about the day job too. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I like blogging and I like the act of committing ideas to the virtual paper - I always wanted to be able to keep a diary, but never felt I was up to it and yet the other day I realised that I've had a blog, in some form or another, for over ten years. Secondly, science is very creative and I enjoy making the most of those opportunities, which is why I like the job. I've treated this blog as a sketchbook of ideas, there's no reason why it shouldn't reflect some of the science ideas too. Finally, the big move is a new start. It is equal parts scary and exciting and I think it would be good for me (and keep me on the level) to write about some of that.

It was quite hard to illustrate this post with photos...

[Footnote - I wrote this post a little while ago now, by the time I'd finished it I wasn't sure how I felt about it any more - more specifically, how I felt about loosing a dedicated 'not-science' space. I may write about science life, I may not. Weirdly, I felt I had to write this to at least give myself the option. If any one has an opinion on this topic, please share it with me!]

Switching

I've been home sick. I knew this would happen and I know I'll come out the other side eventually, but I'm a little disappointed with myself for being quite so struck down by it. I don't want to miss out on the exhilaration of living in a completely new continent. However much I want that I'm getting really frustrated by countless little things not being 'right' or easy - everything seems like a hard slog and every moment of normality hard won. More than anything I don't want to be the sort of person that complains about the country they've moved to not being as good as the one they left behind. You encounter the displaced academic a lot in this line of work, and I always found the constant whining annoying. I don't want to be that person! I don't think it's leaked out too much in front of my new American acquaintances, but poor Dan is baring the brunt of it instead.


I thought I could be sensible and just switch the things I couldn't have/do for new things. That great British staple - Indian food - is terrible so far in Philly. No problem, we can eat Mexican instead. I don't have our garden any more (I think about it constantly at the moment - I can picture every corner of it and every spring bulb with complete clarity). I figured now my hands aren't subject to such regular manual labour I could make the most of it by painting my nails. Sadly it doesn't matter how far I go down this root, I don't think having orange nails is going to compensate for not having earth under my nails. And that's the problem, some things are just too well loved not to miss.

Which leaves us with the next solution - recreating a slice of home in our American city loft apartment. We now have a monthly repeat prescription of 160 Yorkshire gold tea-bags from Amazon, if only because the cost of the 40 tea-bag boxes we could find in town was astronomical. We've also laid in a stock pile of Marmite for similar cost efficiency reasons. I think if we weren't lucky enough to live next to Reading Terminal Market we'd be in serious trouble food-wise. For the most part we really did eat seasonal, local food back home. The thing about America is that because it's so big, local takes on a different meaning. The bewildering choice of vegetables available left us initially quite confused about what to cook with. On top of that, things we thought of as seasonal staples - leeks and rhubarb - are bizarrely expensive and get confused looks from the check out people.

I think we're figuring it out slowly, but the level of perseverance required to get something simple - like yoghurt - in a format that you like - runny, instead of weird, set and jelly like - is exhausting. Thank god for Amish farmers, that's all I can say!

Wedding leftovers: Part II

The truth is we pitched up at the Farm with a rented MPV stacked to the ROOF (literally, we should have taken a picture really) with twigs, leaves, jam jars and booze. I was a passenger for the duration of the trip, slightly overheating under the pile of Dan's kilt, emergency jacket (in case his wasn't delivered) and my dress.

And I am a little (a lot) embarrassed about how much work our nearest and dearest put in on Friday night and Saturday morning to pull it together. Half our guests were there on Friday night (about 30 people all together) and everyone pitched in - that's a lot of people. Jars were filled with stuff, fairy lights were hung, leaf bunting was tied and hung, DINNER was COOKED for everyone (that was planned, but I still can't believe my cousin did that), flower arrangements were made, name tags were tied to jars... the list is endless. Everyone sort of enjoyed pitching in I think, but even so I get red faced thinking about it.

In the wedding world, and (most of) the wedding blog world, everything looks perfect. I was scared of somehow 'missing out' on ideas that would make the day even more special (ridiculous), so I massively over indulged in wedding blogs before the wedding, and I've no idea why because most of the time I didn't enjoy it. In the end I cut back massively just because I couldn't stand reading any more of the same lines. And in the end, pretty much all the stuff that went into our wedding was our ideas anyway - which is exactly how it should be*.

Our wedding wasn't perfect and I don't think it's right that everything looks perfect in blog/magazine land, because it's not the real world. It creates unreal aspirations and desperation. Even when I was writing our Rock n Roll bride entry I was uncomfortable about the unbalanced perception I was giving the world. I want to redress the balance. In the interests of full disclosure, here's some more of our wedding disasters**:

• We did actually hand make chocolate leaves to go on top of the cake - and they looked awesome! - but in the rush to get out of the door we left them in the fridge. Our cake topper, which was two love birds Dan bought me years ago, went missing completely (I thought we'd lost them, but thankfully they turned up the morning after). Our cake had no decorations.
• Half the Ocado order we'd carefully planned for delivery to the farm wasn't delivered, and in the chaos no one noticed till it was too late. Thanks to some last minute supermarket dashes by, yes, our guests (guests? no! slaves!) disaster was averted.
• The laptop/speaker combo happened by the skin of it's teeth and only because of the perseverance of a dear friend.
• I started out wanting to make buttonholes for all our guests, this dropped to just the family (half the guests) and then on the morning of our wedding I found half an hour to tie seven for the absolute closest of close.
• I'd wanted to make a proper feathery head piece to wear, but never had time - in the end I stuck a few in at an odd angle. I had feathers to tie round the cuffs of my boots and sew onto the the neckline of my cape (wouldn't have got the damned thing upside down then, would I) - didn't have time for those either. Didn't have time to do my nails either.
• I practiced my hair once before the wedding and had no real clue if it would work at all, and no real finesse on the day. It stayed up, that's about all I can say!
• I adjusted the straps on my dress myself (which took hours) and then when I'd done it I didn't have time to put my dress on again until I got dressed half an hour before the ceremony - I was lucky, it was not a disaster, but god knows it could have been. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn't seem to do anything about it.
• I printed out owl masks (blow ups of my illustration) for the party later on, but never had time to cut them out or tie the ribbons on.
• I never made menus for the tables, or door signs for people rooms or any number of bits of paper I'd at some point planned.
• We ran out of prosecco for the toasts
• Shame of shames - we didn't have time to think or buy anybody proper thank you presents. This needs to be rectified soon before the guilt consumes me.

But even that doesn't really reflect the feeling of impending catastrophe I went to bed with on the Friday night. Dan and I spent the night before the wedding together. We're useless when we're separated and didn't contemplate the traditional wedding-eve separation for more than about 10 seconds. We both went to bed late and beyond anxious, though. It's crossed my mind since that maybe it isn't a great idea to put the two most anxious people in room together for an event like this. Our anxiety had enormous positive feedback as it passed between us and we kept each other awake. Every time I got close to sleep, my heart started racing and I'd snap wide awake on the verge of a panic attack. I wasn't anxious about the marriage bit, I was anxious about the whole thing turning into a total fiasco and wasting everybody's time and money forcing them to travel so far for this thing. I had so much to get done in the morning still - putting together table decorations into something the caterers could deploy, setting out the cake, button holes, never mind getting ready! - and all I could think was that the whole thing was just going to be awful for everybody. 

I'm not exaggerating - I was the most stressed and anxious I've ever been, it was horrible. Finals? easy. PhD viva? hah! I laugh in the face of such trifles. All those moments in my life I was only ever going to let down myself - screw this up and I was going to let down everyone I loved - everyone. As well as wasting more money than we could afford for a fiasco. Apart from our mortgage, it was the most money either of us had spent on anything ever, and more than we could have conceived possible just a year or two before. And on - lets face it - a party. Pretty frivolous if it all went down the pan.

I was freaking out most of the morning trying to do stuff and eventually was pretty much manhandled into getting ready by friends. Even then I have this perception of dozens of people coming in and out of our room while we were trying to get ready finally - it's all a bit of blur. I don't know whether it was because Dan and I were getting ready together, or just because we were both there on site. I just remember being overwhelmed with all these people and our room looking like a bomb had hit it. God knows what the registrars thought when they interviewed me before the ceremony. It was all very surreal and not at all how I'd imagined it was going to be.

Photo by Laura Babb

But suddenly it was fine. Eventually everyone else had to get ready too. I was alone for a few much needed minutes. Dan had the task of welcoming everyone and chatting to people in the hall. All I had to do was wait. I got a few moments with my family whilst we were waiting for 'the nod' to go through. Then we walked into the hall and I was sort of nervous. I remember looking at Dan as we walked in. It was only an hour since I'd last seen him, but it seemed so much longer. He had a big grin on his face and looked so visibly happy that I finally began to relax.

Photo by Laura Babb

All the anxiety has a very happy ending. It was the most amazingly beautiful day. I was too cynical to believe it would feel like the happiest day of my life, but it really was. When I think about how happy I was it makes me feel a bit dizzy.

Photo by Laura Babb

* There's no point making anything part of such an incredibly intimate moment if it doesn't reflect who you are. If a modern day wedding is anything - for a couple who've been together for seven years already, own a house together and, by logical analysis, don't need a marriage to stay together - it's a moment to celebrate who your are as couple, thank everyone who's supported you through life to get you to this privileged point and establish how your going to live the rest of your lives together.

** On the scale of disasters I know these don't rank highly, the key elements were all there and it was only a wedding after all. But even a logical bride (and groom) loose track of what's important when it gets to crunch time.