Funny, After I went Shopping, I wasn't Mad Anymore!

Poor, sweet, husband. He was a cranky-pants on Saturday. So, after awhile, I'd had enough of him and. . .


. . . went shopping! I actually found stuff I liked (which is rare!) And dollars later, I wasn't mad anymore! (Actually, he doesn't mind at all, because he knows I hardly ever buy clothes.)

Russian Sage & Chocolate Ruffles Heuchera

Chocolate Ruffles Heuchera flowers. MMmmmmm. . . . Doesn't the name alone make you want to eat them? These are out playing in my yard at this very moment, unsupervised.


Early in the summer, I think of the Russian Sage as being weeds and consider pulling them out and tossing them. They grace an area next to our garbage can! And then they suddently stretch out, grow a little larger than the year before and redeem themselves with these fairfly long-lasting blossoms that will probably hang around until the first sign of snow. With absolutely no tender loving care or attention whatsoever. They're kind of the codependent cinderellas of the garden.

Echinacea Extravaganza

Can't just quit at photographing one! In North Dakota, these are the most vibrant days of color!

Cash for Clunkers Execution

Here are a few more photos from the garden tour I went on last weekend. This first one shows a "cook house" in the middle of the garden. As beautiful as this yard was, I really didn't much like the layout; this yard was "built" in about 3 years, and the cook house does have this really cool option of being able to cook in it even when it's 20 below zero. I don't know; you still have to get from the back door, across the patio, through the snow, and into it! I think I'd be more inclined to use the jacuzzi in that weather! (Jacuzzis are actually amazing when it's extremely cold; you actually do stay quite warm in the middle of the ice cube called "North Dakota." This, I wish I had in MY back yard!The trip TO the jacuzzi is a challenge; the trip back to the house is usually very comfortable--unless you hit a snow drift.)



This next photo was from another house on the tour. Ha! Finally a use for all those humongous shoes and boots left behind by my children!



And now for a not-so-pleasant thought following yesterday's obituary for our Dodge:

Here’s how the car dealership is instructed to destroy the clunker’s engine:

"THIS PROCEDURE IS NOT TO BE USED BY THE VEHICLE OWNER Perform the following procedure to disable the vehicle engine.
Since the vehicle will not be drivable after this procedure is performed, consider where the procedure will be performed and how the vehicle will be moved after the procedure is complete.
1. Obtain solution of 40% sodium silicate/60% water. (The Sodium Silicate (SiO2/Na2O) used in the solution must have a weight ratio of 3.0 or greater.)

2. Drain engine oil for environmentally appropriate disposal.

3. Install the oil drain plug.4. Pour enough solution in the engine through the oil fill for the oil pump to circulate the solution throughout the engine. Start by adding 2 quarts of the solution, which should be sufficient in most cases.

4.CAUTION: Wear goggles and gloves. Appropriate protective clothing should be worn to prevent silicate solution from coming into contact with the skin.

5. Replace the oil fill cap.

6. Start the engine.

7. Run engine at approximately 2000 rpm (for safety reasons do not operate at high rpm) until the engine stops. (Typically the engine will operate for 3 to 7 minutes. As the solution starts to affect engine operation, the operator will have to apply more throttle to keep the engine at 2000 rpm.)

8. Allow the engine to cool for at least 1 hour.

9. With the battery at full charge or with auxiliary power to provide the power of a fully charged battery, attempt to start the engine.10. If the engine will not operate at idle, the procedure is complete.

11. If the engine will operate at idle, repeat steps 6 through 10 until the engine will no longer idle.

12. Attach a label to the engine that legibly states the following: This engine is from a vehicle that is part of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS). It has significant internal damage caused by operating the engine with a sodium silicate solution (liquid glass) instead of oil.

Eeewwwwww!!!!!!

I prefer Maria's suggestion of a jazz funeral procession through town. We're still waiting for word on whether the Cash for Clunker deal went through, but this makes me not so eager to rush things along.

Good Bye, Good Old Clunker Car! Obituary for a Dodge

Doug and I are in the process of trying to get a new car through the Cash for Clunkers deal. It seems like such a shame, in some ways!

I'm not complaining, mind you. It's pretty exciting to get to look at new cars, with all kinds of new doo-dads (probably each with their own dreaded owner's manual), (and God only knows where they've hid the gas cap.) But the new car won't really get that much better mileage than our 1996 Dodge Caravan.

I wish I could call it our "trusty" minivan, but really, it wasn't. And believe me, it looks much better in this photograph than it does in real life! And the fact that the odometer stopped working many years ago, along with the speedometer, is not exactly a selling point for it, either.

Still, this behemoth has seen a lot of life with us. We never wanted to buy it in the first place. Our equally frustrating, unreliable, challenging Red Dodge Caravan had been leaving us stranded by the side of the road in way too many places. The final straw for the red Caravan was when we took our kids from Grand Forks, ND to Texas to live for a few months with my brother and sister-in-law, literally escaping the flood waters of 1997. Our little Daitsu was totalled in the flood, and the red Caravan proceeded to break down (predictably) all the way to Texas and all the way back. We knew we'd never make it back to Texas in the beast, to get our children, and we really kind of wanted them back!

So we had to find a new car. Fast. In the middle of devastating flood clean-up, and with our dyfunctional flood-brains, we made the same mistake twice and bought another used Dodge Caravan.

And you know how it goes with a mini-van with 3 kids; they get packed full with luggage and friends, and the dog, and very, very sticky (and stinky) things. I'm sure if I look now in Scott's compartment in the back seat, I'd find gum wrappers and gum. Brian would probably have superballs and track cleats in his. Dianna would have hair bands and little notebooks with strange messages to her friends. No one wants to know what all the stains mean. We've hauled all of Scott's belongings, and Dianna's, to Washington, DC , with dorm refrigerators and computers--and then back again. We've taken Brian's things to Missouri, with the dreaded last 200 miles of the trip interrupted by the Missouri State Police, accusing us of being $12 worth of gas-runners, and making us drive 150 miles--back to pay a second $12.

We've rushed to ERs with the minor stuff of childhood; we've searched out birthday parties and friends and sporting events and gone trick-or-treating. We've headed to Chicago to see the relatives, braved more blizzards than I care to remember, and gotten totally lost in cities and woods.

And now we're going to crush it. Drive a stake through its heart. Really, it doesn't seem right. Even though we seem to be constantly replacing some other major chunk of this clunker, and it has practically no Blue Book value (not that anyone would ever buy it, because of the recalcitrant speedometer), it does seem like it should get some kind of funeral. Not exactly a Thelma & Louise push off a cliff, or polluting any waters or anything, but maybe one last drive through the city, blasting Kenny G from its cassette player (wait! that doesn't work anymore, either!)

Hell's Kitchen Peanut Butter

It's a good day when something like this comes in the mail! Mmmmmm . . . peanut butter! Brian took me to a place in Minneapolis for breakfast, back in February, and the peanut butter was so incredible, we each took home a jar of peanut butter. Brian ate his in about a week; Doug and I slowly doled out tastey little rations of it over the last several months. But alas, we also eventually depleted our supply.


Brian is much too busy with work and school to make it out to the restaurant to pick some up for us (he lives in Minneapolis; we live 350 miles away in Grand Forks), so I finally took matters into my own hands . . .


. . . and had two jars sent to him, and one sent to us. (I also sent him a crock pot in the mail this past week, but I have much more confidence that the peanut butter captured his attention more than the crock pot.)

If you ever get anywhere close to a Hell's Kitchen, buy the peanut butter!

The Farm in the Garden

I wish my photos could do justice to the stretch of color and blooms in the garden in Tabor, MN. As I stepped into it, I had the sense of being on the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz; you know the moment--it's when everything changes from black and white to color!

This shot gives you a peek of the farm just beyond the garden. Irene Larsen is very careful not to plant ornamental grasses because she is afraid of the grasses seeding or spreading into the farmland fields. She also says that her gardens are "nice, but not spectacular." Ummm-- she's wrong; they're spectacular.

More of the Tabor Garden

Everywhere I looked, until I was practically drowning in them, were lilies and deliphinium.

I think if I ever need to run away from home, this is where I'm going (only in summer!) You'll find my lying on my back, arms stretched out, breathing it all in. Hopefully, I can do this discretely and won't be noticed.

Tabor, MN

This past weekend, Doug and I also participated in our local Garden Tour. Our final stop was outside of Grand Forks, near Tabor, MN. Irene Larson has been planting her gardens, adding to them and modifying them, for some 30 years. You'll see more photos from this garden in the coming days, but here are a few of her gorgeous perennials. To get to her farmland/garden, we took flat, desolate, roads across the countryside, and for the last 1 1/2 miles on a gravel road, followed this vehicle:

Don't you just hate bumper-to-bumper, congested traffic?





An especially nice touch at this stop was the young woman playing classical music on a clavinova in the garden gazebo. And the homemade cookies and lemonade weren't bad either!

Art in Public Places

This is a garden at the Myra Museum in Grand Forks, ND. This water feature is in front of the original Grand Forks post office, built in 1868, the oldest building in the city. The garden is the newest garden at the historical museum. It features primarily prairie plants and grasses.



Vacationing in Place: Grand Forks, ND